Lesser Forms of Love
by LittleMonsoon
Summary: After confessing her feelings to Benny only for him to tell her that he only thinks of her as a friend, Luan questions her self-worth and starts to wonder if she even deserves love in the first place.
1. Chapter 1

**_AN:_** _I don't know what the market's like for another "L is for Love followup" these days, but I thought it'd be fun to give this idea a shot._

 _A while back, I wrote a story called Stage Kisses, which was about Luan developing romantic feelings for Benny, and while I don't necessarily consider this a sequel to Stage Kisses so much as a mildly interesting 'what if' scenario, this does carry on with and contain references to Benny's characterization from that earlier work, so I'd recommend giving it a read through before continuing with this._

 _There's probably no need for me to clarify this, but I feel like I should mention that this wasn't written because I hate this ship or anything like that (I still like Luan and Benny and think that they're pretty cute together, and will probably write some more stuff about them at some point), but rather because I love seeing Luan's more emotionally vulnerable side explored, and I thought that this would be a pretty good vehicle with which to do just that. I also kinda feel like a lot of kids around Luan and Benny's age have a tendency to tie in their self-esteems with the idea of being in romantic relationships, and I thought that might make an interesting topic to delve into._

 _With all of that out of the way, all that's left to say is that this story should run somewhere between three to five chapters long, and that the beginning picks up right after that scene in_ L is for Love _where Benny runs after Luan's love letter on the fishing line._

 _Lemme know whatcha think, and I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Lesser Forms of Love

Comedy, during the time of Shakespeare, did not necessarily refer to a play that contained a plethora of jokes and gags. Rather, a true Elizabethan comedy was merely any play that ended happily. Usually with two of the main characters getting married.

After all, what could possibly be a happier occasion than a wedding?

This was something that Luan had learned at the start of her Theatre 101 class in her freshman year, and while she didn't exactly anticipate getting married anytime soon (hopeless romantic though she had recently turned into over the past few days, she liked to think that she was still self-aware enough to know that thinking _that_ far ahead was certainly overkill), the lesson couldn't help but leap to the forefront of her mind as she ran through the backstage of the high school auditorium, fishing pole in her hands with a long nylon line trailing behind her. Pierced onto a hook at the other end of that line was no nightcrawler or earthworm, but rather an envelope, inside of which Luan had placed a heartfelt confession of love; a far more effective type of bait for the fish that she was trying to catch; Benny. Benny with the brown hair, Benny with the big blue eyes, Benny in the beat-up bowling shirt.

Benny her buddy…Benny her best friend…

Benny boo-boo-bear…

Though she never _dared_ to say it aloud (much as she loved making people laugh, there were still limits to how much she was willing to embarrass herself in front of others), that was another alliterative name that Luan often thought of calling him. Sometimes, when she was all alone, she would mouth it silently to herself, just to see how it felt on her lips. It was a pet-name that she heard at least a hundred times a day from the bedroom across the hall from her's and Luna's, where Lori would spend hours at a time laying on her bed and talking to Bobby on the phone, telling him over and over again and again how much she loved him and missed him and how he was the greatest thing that ever happened to her…

Now it was Luan's turn to join Lori in the sun and enter into a relationship of her very own.

So sweet and earnest; Benny chased after that envelope with the same sort of sincere enthusiasm that Labradors usually reserved for fetching tennis balls, his large feet in his torn sneakers galumphing across the hardwood floor. So awkward, but then again so was she, so that only endeared himself to her even more. Most of the other students that made up the Royal Woods High School drama department had already left for the day following rehearsal, but those that had remained shot the pair strange looks as they ran around laughing without a care in the world, both completely unafraid of being themselves around each other. She was so proud of the way that she could make him laugh. Nobody else did so as well as she.

They must have been made for each other. As Yente the Matchmaker from _Fiddler on the Roof_ might have said; they were a good match; a strong match. Right?

Of course right.

She had to admit though; some small part of her almost wished that he'd trip and fall on a sandbag or loose rope, not because she wanted to see him get hurt, of course, but only so that later, after she had confessed her feelings for him and they'd shared their first true kiss as a couple, she could quip that she had fallen for him just as badly as he had ( _quite literally_ ) fallen for her. Hardy-har-har-har. Queue the audience laughter and standing ovation. Let the curtain fall. Bring out the whole cast and crew for one final bow…

A cute joke, sure, but while pratfalls had their place, the timing now was definitely not right, and Luan understood better than anyone the importance of proper comedic timing. A good comedienne had to know how to properly pace out her gags in order for them to have the biggest impact possible. Even an absolute rib-tickler of a joke was just as likely to elicit unamused groans instead of laughter if it were to go on for even a nanosecond longer than necessary.

Come to think of it, by her estimation this whole 'fishing pole' bit had just about run its course and was dangerously close to overstaying its welcome.

She decided that it was high-time to deliver the punchline.

* * *

Underfunded as they were, the Royal Woods High School drama program didn't exactly offer much in the way of production value. Secondhand Halloween costumes for wardrobe and cheap dollar store props were the norm for every presentation, from the paper crown that sat atop Oberon's head in the Fall 2016 production of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ to the plastic toy swords that Peter and Captain Hook dueled with in the Spring 2017 production of _Peter Pan_. When not in use, these items, alongside innumerable others, were kept housed in a mid-sized storage closet just outside the auditorium.

Private and secluded, it struck Luan as the perfect place to tell Benny just what he meant to her.

She burst into that room, switched on the flickery overhead fluorescent light, and ducked behind a metal rack onto which were hung over a dozen red-and-white marching band uniforms, which were dusted off every few years for productions of _The Music Man_. Seated on the dirty wooden floor and nestled among those outfits, Luan liked to think that the spirit of Howard Hill, the smooth-talking and quick-witted conman with a heart of gold who was the play's main protagonist, was looking down on her with a smile on his face, nodding in approval at what she was up to. While she waited for Benny to catch up with and join her, she started tapping her foot and mumbling the words to 'Rock Island,' _The Music Man's_ crowdpleaser of an opening number, to herself. Mostly so that she'd have a distraction from the butterflies in her stomach. "… _He's a music man and he sells clarinets to the kids in the town with the big trombones and the rat-a-tat drums, and the big brass bass, big brass bass, and the piccolo, the piccolo, the uniforms too, with a shiny gold braid on the coat and a big red stripe runnin' down…_ "

Her chest was something of a rat-a-tat drum itself at the moment.

She always had an affinity and special talent for patter songs, those that required a quick and silver tongue capable of delivering rapid-fire bits of clever wordplay on a dime. One of the hardest times that she had ever worked her comedic muscles was when she flawlessly performed 'The Major-General's Song' from _The Pirates of Penzance_ in front of a packed house at the start of the school year as part of a fundraiser to raise money for the theatre club. Having honed her skills through years of doing standup and delighting young children as a birthday entertainer, she had no trouble at all with getting up on stage and singing her heart out in front of hundreds of people. Five hundred and ninety-seven people, to be precise, as that was the High School auditorium's maximum occupancy.

So why was it that now she was so nervous at the prospect of revealing her most inner feelings to a single boy, one who surely couldn't have been anything other than her soulmate?

Life was just funny like that sometimes, she supposed.

She heard the door to the storage closet creak open, and when she brushed aside one of the uniforms on the rack she saw Benny standing in the doorway, smiling his crooked smile as he scanned the room in search of his best friend, blissfully unaware of how their friendship was about to blossom into something so much more fulfilling. The envelope lay face down on the floor in front of him, and when he reached to pick it up Luan scrambled to grab her fishing pole and reel it in, her heartbeat no longer a mere rat-a-tat drum but instead seventy-six trombones leading a big parade. Absurdly, she did not cease her singing even as that parcel glided towards her. If anything, she only picked up the pace. "… _No, the fellow sells bands, boys' bands, I don't know how he does it but he lives like a king and he dallies and he gathers and he plucks and he shines and when the man dances certainly, boys, what else? The piper pays him! Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir…_ " The envelope slid to a halt directly before her, and yet Benny was nowhere to be found. Distracted as she was by her song and the whir of the fishing reel and the excitement of the moment, she must have lost track of the sound of his footsteps. "… _When the man dances, certainly, boys, what else? The piper pays him! Yessssir, yessssir_ …"

A single second of silence followed, and then Benny swept aside the costumes on the frame like he were a stage-hand pulling back the curtain on the show of a lifetime. " _But he doesn't know the territory_!" he proclaimed with a joyous grin on his face, singing the final line of 'Rock Island' in Luan's stead. His sudden appearance took her by surprise and she let out a small involuntary yelp, but bright laughter from the both of them followed in its wake, as it always did when they were together and indulged in any of their inside jokes. Spontaneously singing old showtunes in duets was something that they shared with no one else. Not Benny with his father, nor Luan with her parents, sisters, or brother.

'Course, the members of her family all had their own private jokes amongst themselves as well, but never mind that fact.

As their mirth died down, Benny took a seat right in front of Luan, folding his legs criss-cross applesauce and leaning forward to take the bait once and for all, grabbing the envelope hesitantly as if half-expecting her to pull it away once again. To her surprise, however, he didn't immediately rip it open as soon as it was in his clasp. Instead, he merely held it in his hand as he struck up a conversation, almost like he were happy to take his time and simply enjoy the moment with her. This made Luan feel a bit impatient, but she supposed that she could stand a few more minutes of being nothing more than his friend. "Ah, _The Music Man_ ," he said contentedly. "An absolute classic!" Benny always _did_ have the habit of referring to most of the plays and films that he liked as 'absolute classics,' and while Luan's response was to smirk and roll her eyes, in truth it was just one of his many little quirks that she had grown to adore. "I ever tell you that's the play that made me want to be an actor?" he asked offhand.

Luan perked up at this new piece of information. "No kiddin'?" she said, looking forward to hearing his explanation as to why. They spoke of many things during their times spent together, from gossiping about the other kids in theatre club to cracking terrible puns to discussing the finer aspects of film and comedy, but none of that meant as much to her as when they would open up and reveal to each other in complete sincerity different facets of their personal lives. Such was the strength of their bond. They knew things about each other that no one else did, and were utterly comfortable with this.

'Course, there were many a night when, gripped by insomnia, Luan and Luna would lay awake in their bunk-bed and talk until sunrise, sharing with each other their hopes and dreams and anxieties about their futures. She supposed that Luna _also_ knew things about her that no one else did, as did Lori, and Leni, and Lincoln, etc…like she were a prism with many different surfaces, and whenever any of those closest to her shone their light through her, it was refracted in totally unique ways for each of them. But never mind that fact.

Back to Benny.

"Yup! You remember how, back in elementary school, twice a year the teachers would take us out of classes for a few hours and we'd get to go over to the high school to watch the drama department do their dress rehearsals?" She nodded yes. Of course she remembered. Those were some of the best times she ever had in grades one through six. Some of the _only_ genuinely good times, as a matter of fact. "Well, when I was in third grade, it was _The Music Man_. Everybody looked like they were having so much fun, like it was just a bunch of friends singing and dancing and goofing around. I mean, I always loved theatre, but that was the first time that it really dawned on me that it was something that I could become a part of while I was still young." Luan smiled, happy to realize that her choice of location was now all of a sudden infused with even more meaning. Benny was so lucky; now the sight of marching band uniforms would, from this day onwards, not only remind him of what had brought about his passion for acting, but of the moment that he took his friendship with her to the next level. "What about you?" he asked, and she realized that she had been staring at him with a sickly-sweet grin on her face. "What play made _you_ want to be an actress?" He was such a generous conversationalist, always wanting to hear her talk, always asking her questions about herself. _What's your favorite Marx Brothers' movie, Luan? Who's the better silent comedian in your opinion; Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? What's your favorite song from_ West Side Story _?_ He must have loved hearing her perspectives on things _._ It was enough to make her feel so cherished. "Let me guess; _The Producers_?"

A fair guess, but incorrect. Much as she loved _The Producers_ , and much as its gags never failed to make her giggle uncontrollably, there was a far more obscure musical that she had in mind. "Actually," she said sheepishly, both sorry to correct him and a little embarrassed, "it was _Honk!_ "

He held back a small laugh. "Seriously?" Clearly, she was right to be embarrassed. "You mean the Ugly Duckling musical?" By his tone, she could tell that he was not impressed with her choice.

She chuckled, laughing it off. "Hey, gimme a break, I was eight, I hadn't developed good taste yet," she said. "I just thought it was kinda funny and cute is all…" Accurate, but not exactly the full story. In fact, that barely scratched the surface of the play's significance to her, though much as she loved opening up to him, she didn't feel the need to elaborate. She knew that couples weren't supposed to keep secrets from one another (she had heard Lori use this fact to guilt Bobby into telling her things over the course of their relationship), but seeing as technically Benny and she weren't a couple just yet, she saw no harm in keeping at least a few things to herself. At least for a while longer.

"Well, I guess _Honk!_ has it's charms," Benny admitted with a smile. "It's got a few pretty great songs, for one thing." He cleared his throat and made like he was about to launch into a one-man rendition of 'A Poultry Tale,' the play's opening number, and while ordinarily she loved hearing him sing, by this point she couldn't bear waiting another minute.

"Aren't you going to open that?" she asked, reminding him of the envelope in his hand.

The song caught in his throat and he looked to the paper as if he had forgotten that it was there. "This'd better not be another one of your pranks," he warned with a playful smirk as he used his thumbnail to tear open the flap. "I still haven't forgiven you for putting a whoopee cushion on my chair the other day."

"Oh, I think you'll forget all about _that_ once you see what's inside," she said, her voice all sing-song and mock-sweet. She couldn't remember the last time she felt so giddy.

Benny's big blue eyes went as wide as twin moons when he reached into the folds of the envelope and pulled out what was inside; two small rectangular slips of paper in red and gold, elaborate cursive writing embossed on their fronts, as if they came from a more elegant time in history. As he looked them over and read what was scrawled on their surfaces, it suddenly dawned on him just what exactly they were. "Oh my god…" he quietly said, his tone reverential. "Luan, are these-"

"Yup!" she interrupted cheerfully, unable to contain her excitement. "Two tickets to see _Fiddler on the Roof_ tomorrow night at the Detroit Opera House! I figured since you and I are gonna audition to be Tevye and Golde in the Spring production, this would be a great _opera_ -tunity to do some research firsthand and see how the professionals _play_ the parts!" Before she could chuckle at her oh-so-clever puns and ask Benny if he 'got it,' she felt her body constricted in a tight hug that squeezed the wind from her lungs, her soon-to-be boyfriend's chin resting on and digging into her shoulder, somehow both pleasant and unpleasant all at once. Never before had she met a boy who was so casually affectionate and comfortable with hugging her.

Other than her father, of course, and Lincoln.

But never mind that fact.

"You have no idea how much this means to me," he said, his voice overflowing with emotion, though she did have _some_ idea. Benny and his father never really had much money to spend on frivolous things like theatre tickets, except for the occasional cheap amateur production or free visit to Shakespeare in the Park, and while funds were stretched thin across thirteen people in her own family, the one-hundred and sixty dollars she had spent for passes to the Opera House was a drop in the bucket compared to what she had saved over the years from Funny Business. Perhaps part of her was subtly trying to imply that she could provide for him. "This is the best present I've ever been given." She heard him sniffle quietly and could have sworn that she felt a few teardrops land on her back and soak through her blouse. So sensitive and in touch with his feelings; it was how she knew that her confession of love would be reciprocated with a beautiful and heartfelt soliloquy straight out of a sappy 1950's romance film. Though she knew that she could be snarky and irreverent at times with her humor, she appreciated his wide-eyed and genuine nature. They complimented each other well, she felt.

Together, it was like they made up one whole person. That must have been why all of the characters that she saw on television were always telling their spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends, "you complete me."

He broke away from the hug and used the back of his wrist to dry his eyes, looking a bit embarrassed of himself. Luan, who much preferred his laughter to his tears, had just the pun in mind to put him at ease. "Well, you know me," she said. "Always _pushing the envelope_!" She had been waiting hours for an excuse to use that line.

Anyone else would have groaned, but not Benny. His snorting laugh landed like a trumpet on the ear, and just like that the tension of the moment was broken. Glancing at the fake plastic tree in the corner that's primary purpose was as set-decoration for productions of _Waiting for Godot_ , inspiration seemed to strike for a joke of his very own. "You definitely deserve _props_ for that one, Luan!"

She chuckled much harder than was warranted. "Good one!" she lied, then her demeanor quickly turned serious. Smoothly as her plan was thus far working out, there was one final pressing matter to take care of. After all, the tickets were only the _second_ most valuable things that she had intended to give to Benny. "Speaking of props; I _prop_ -ose that you look in the envelope again!"

Curious, Benny did as requested and quickly discovered that he had missed a crucial detail before, that being the folded sheet of paper within the envelope. He took it out, unfurled it, and was greeted with beautiful hand-drawn pictures of fish and whales and other creatures of the sea. Suddenly, Luan's choice to use a fishing pole to lure him into the storage closet made a lot more sense. At the center of everything, she had written a declaration of love in the language that she was most fluent in; puns.

"'I _fish_ I had told you sooner that my love for you is _reel,'"_ Benny read aloud, sounding confused. "'So as not to leave you with _bait_ -ed breath, let me say it now; I'm _hooked_ on you!'" Some of Luan's best work, if she did say so herself. For once, however, Benny didn't seem to think that her jokes were very funny. He only stared at the paper, a slow look of realization crossing his face as he processed this tectonic shift in his worldview. "This isn't a prank, is it?" he asked, sounding almost hopeful, like he wanted more than anything for Luan to burst out laughing and yell 'gotcha!'

Not exactly the reaction that she had in mind, but then again she couldn't blame him for his skepticism. She _did_ have a reputation as a master prankster. No matter. All he needed was a little assurance that what she had written was completely genuine. "No Benny," she said with a soft smile but no trace of humor in her voice. "No pranks; no jokes." She did as they had done a few rare times before and slid her palm over his hand, wondering why it felt so stiff and lifeless at her touch, like it belonged to a mannequin. She told herself that it was only her imagination; that, if anything, the storage closet was simply poorly heated, and that Benny was just a bit cold and in need of her love to make him warm again. "For once, I'm being completely serious. I think that you are sweet, and funny, and kind, and, um, you know…c-cute…" She blushed furiously at that, but pressed on. "And I think that, deep down, you must feel the same way about me, so I thought I'd spare you the trouble of making the first move and do it for you."

Those big blue eyes started leaking once again, and a glassy layer of tears appeared on the bottom rim of his eyelids. _Now this is more like it_ , Luan thought to herself. It was just the right level of emotionality that she had expected. "Oh Luan…" he said, unable to speak above a broken whisper.

"And maybe…if you wanted…we could make our trip to the Opera House our first date. You know; as a couple. Whaddya say?" It was a question asked solely out of formality. She already knew what his answer was. All that was left for him to do was lean forward and kiss her on the lips. She closed her eyes, smiled wider, and braced herself for her imminent ascension into a whole new stratosphere.

"…I am so, _so_ sorry."

* * *

 _Through the aorta and atrium and ventricles and other assorted chambers of Luan's heart, a long parade marched._

 _It was led, as_ The Music Man's _big showstopping number described, by seventy-six trombones, one hundred and ten cornets, and rows upon rows of the finest virtuosos, all marching to the steady firecracker beat of a snare drum and playing triumphant victory songs while cheerleaders wearing shako hats with feathery plumes on top twirled batons so swiftly that they produced a sound that was like a helicopter's whirring blades. Following close behind were elaborate floats, from which men and women with fancy ribbon sashes across their chests waved and threw candy to the cheering onlookers. Horses trotted along, and floating above it all were gigantic balloons of Saturday morning cartoon characters._

 _Bringing up the rear, as was the case with many parades, were firetrucks._

 _Benny's apology must have lit an inferno somewhere, because suddenly the discordant blare of sirens was added to the mixture of brass instruments. At once it was pandemonium; the firetrucks' speed accelerated from a slow crawl to a breakneck clip, and like a combine harvester through a cornfield, everything in its path was obliterated. Parade-marchers had to leap out of the way lest they be run over. Drivers and riders abandoned their floats and handlers let go of their lengths of twine as they escaped the truck's path of destruction, letting those massive parade balloons drift up and away, never to be seen again._

 _After that, silence. There was no more music to be played, and_ certainly _no more victory songs. What victory, after all, was there to celebrate?_

* * *

"You're…sorry?"

Luan's voice wavered, and inside, her soul lay in shattered pieces; fragments of a broken mirror in a plastic bag, the sides stretching and tearing. No longer did she believe that the spirit of Howard Hill was watching over her with a kind smile on his face, but instead she could have sworn that she heard him cruelly laughing at her; him, along with all of the other theatre characters who's spirits haunted the storage closet.

Benny nodded shyly and retracted his hand from her's, rubbing at his arm nervously as if he had just received a shot to the bicep. This whole experience, to him, must have felt rather like an unpleasant medical procedure that he couldn't wait to be over with. "I mean, I'm really flattered," he said regretfully. "I just don't, um…I don't…" He choked on his words, his mouth moving but nothing coming out, like he were a mudskipper that had spent too much time out of the water and was starting to suffocate. Finally, he forced a confession of his own from his throat. "…Feel _that_ way…"

"But why not?" Luan asked, not caring if the question came across as absurd or childish. "Did I do something wrong?"

Never before had she seen such a panicked look come to his eyes. "No, of course not!" he was quick to insist. "It's not like that at all! I just…" His alarmed tone faded away, and Benny seemed to withdraw to himself, looking away from Luan's pained gaze and staring instead at the floor. "…I just have my own personal reasons is all."

Such a vague answer did nothing to assuage her worries. Everything that Luan knew about relationships was gleamed either from her parents, Lori and Bobby, or from television, films, and plays, and while Lori and Bobby had never broken up, and her parents were very happily married, Luan had seen enough sitcoms in her life to know that anytime anyone used the ' _it's not you, it's me_ ' excuse, they were lying. It was practically a cliché. No, it had to have been her fault and her fault alone for failing to inspire true love from Benny. Her only hope was to try to pinpoint which of her many fatal flaws was too overpowering for him to look past. Then, perhaps, she could try to fix what was wrong with her. "Is it my teeth?" she asked desperately, completely ignoring his point. "It's my teeth, isn't it?"

Benny appeared horrified by her self-abasement. "No way!" he insisted. "Your teeth are great; they're, like, your trademark. Picturing Luan Loud without her buck-teeth and braces would be like picturing Chaplin without his mustache and bowler hat; it'd just look _wrong_."

Truly, he must have been an incredible actor. She was never that impressed with his performances during rehearsals before, but now she could almost believe that he meant what he was saying. Almost. She knew better though. There had to have been something the matter with her for him to not want to take their friendship to the next level, and she was determined to find out what it was. Her mind raced through all of the things that she had ever been told to her face by other children in school or heard whispered behind her back. "Is it my voice? My jokes? I know I can be annoying sometimes-"

"You are **_not_** annoying," he said strongly. "You're the funniest person I've ever met, and I mean that. You're perfect just the way you are." Luan almost wanted to stand up and applaud his performance; even when she looked into his eyes, the illusion that he was telling the truth did not break.

She quickly grew tired of guessing. "Then what is it?" she pleaded. "Why don't you like me?"

"I _do_ like you, Luan; probably more than I've ever liked anyone else before. I'd even go so far as to say that I love you."

"You know what I mean," she curtly fired back.

He sighed and pressed his palms into his eyes, emotionally exhausted. "…Like I said, I have my own personal reasons," he repeated solemnly. "You, um, remember what I told you once? About me and my dad?"

"Yeah, sure," she replied with apathy. She remembered the night well; it was the first time that they had ever touched hands. Now the memory was tarnished, and she knew that whenever she looked back on it from this day forward, it would inspire nothing but pangs of sorrow. She wondered vaguely if Benny's pleasant memories of watching _The Music Man_ as a child would similarly be tainted by virtue of the play's costumes providing set dressing to his rejection of her advances. Somehow, she doubted it. Clearly she didn't mean as much to him as he did to her. "You said that ever since you were little, it's just been you two alone and no one else." She couldn't see what that had to do with anything.

"Right, and even then, him and I have never really had that much in common." He took his hands from his now bloodshot eyes, staring into Luan's face with all of the warmth that he could muster. "You are so, _so_ lucky, Luan, to have such a big family. All my life, I've always wanted a brother or a sister; you know, somebody that I could really connect with…" He paused, managed a weak smile, and forged ahead. "Then I met you…" She hated the direction in which she was being led, but felt utterly powerless to do anything about it. She'd had a few sleep paralysis nightmares in her life before; hyper realistic dreams in which she'd wake up in her bed unable to move while shadowy figures in the corner of her room watched and slowly advanced towards her. The terrible feelings that such nightmares inspired were nothing compared to what she felt now. All she could do was sit and listen as Benny said the worst thing that he possibly could have told her. "That's what I see you as, Luan," he said, his voice swelling with emotion. "You're the sister I've always wanted."

He delivered the line like it were the big emotional climax in a Broadway musical, sounding every bit as heartfelt as Luan did when she told him how she felt. It was almost like he believed that his love, in its own way, was as strong as her's. Luan knew better, though. The words stuck to her chest like a yellow consolation ribbon, the sharp pin piercing through to her heart. Not much of a prize, all told.

Picking up on her disappointment, he held the tickets back out in front of him, nearly urging her to take them back. "I, um, understand if you don't want to go see _Fiddler_ with me anymore."

"Why wouldn't I?" she said with the bare-minimum of emotion. She must not have been as capable an actor as he apparently was, as she couldn't bring herself to put on a happy face, but the least she could do was try not to come across as emotionally dead. "We're still friends, right?" _Just friends. Only friends. Nothing more than friends._ "Friends hang out with each other." Funny how one little word could make such a difference. The distinction was subtle, yet oh so profound; had she been able to say that they were _going_ out rather than merely _hanging_ out, perhaps then she would not have felt so empty.

Benny allowed himself to perk up slightly, eagerly hoping that everything could continue on as usual. "It'll still be loads of fun!" he assured her with a too-wide smile. "I've only ever seen pictures of it online and in books, but the Opera House is _such_ a beautiful theatre. I can't wait to see it in person! And _Fiddler_ is my all-time favorite show ever. As a Jewish kid who grew up without a whole lot of money, I don't think there's a song that I relate to more than 'If I Were a Rich Man.'" He slowly began snapping his fingers, quietly singing in his beautiful voice, " _If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum_ …" and looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to join in, desperate for any kind of reassurance that they could still carry on like nothing had changed between them.

Such a reassurance did not arrive. Instead, she simply got up from off the floor and said bluntly, "I've gotta go," pushing aside the rack of costumes and walking towards the exit without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

Benny's song cut out mid-lyric as he sadly watched her leave. "Oh, okay," he said timidly. "I'll, um, text you later?"

"Right, sure," she acknowledged without enthusiasm.

Just as her hand reached out to grip the doorknob, she heard him calling after her once again. "Are you okay, Luan?" He sounded truly concerned. "I mean, we can talk about this a little more if you want."

The absolute _last_ thing she wanted was to discuss this matter any further. "Yeah, I'm fine," she lied through gritted teeth. "I've just gotta go now if I wanna catch the late bus home." Music of a much different sort came to her mind at that moment; a song from what Benny had once told her was his favorite Marx Brothers' movie. "It's like Groucho said in _Animal Crackers_ ; _Hello, I must be going, I came to say, I cannot stay, I must be going, I'm glad I came but just the same I must be going, la la~_ " The song came forth from her mouth as a lament instead of the lighthearted tune that it was in the film. She didn't even realize as she sang that tears were welling up in her eyes.

Instead of joining in with the next verse, Benny only stared at her sorrowfully. "Luan, are you sure you're okay?" Only a few moments prior, he had so wished for her to sing alongside him, but now he couldn't bring himself to add his voice to the duet.

Her only answer was to continue on with her song. "… _I'll stay a week or two, I'll stay the summer through, but I am telling you, I must be going~_ "

And thus she left the storage closet behind, shutting the door on all of those props that looked so real when viewed from a distance in theatre seats but when examined up close were revealed to be chintzy and fake-looking.

She was overcome with nostalgia for the days when she could believe in everything that she saw on the stage.


	2. Chapter 2

_Though Luan's primary role in theatre club was as an actress, practicality dictated that she, along with every other member, fulfill multiple tasks, which of course she did not mind in the slightest._

 _As a child in a family of thirteen, she was used to putting aside her own personal preferences for the sake of a larger group._

 _When Mrs Bernardo, the school's head theatre director, announced at the start of the semester during a drama club meeting in the school's band room that they would perform, as a choir, 'Masquerade' from_ The Phantom of the Opera _at their annual fundraiser concert, Luan gladly volunteered her services towards designing and crafting Venetian masks for them all to wear._

 _"Just_ mask _and you shall receive!" she had quipped._

 _Benny had to throw his hand over his mouth to keep himself from giggling aloud. Nobody else had found her joke to be so amusing, not least of all the teacher, who audibly groaned as soon as the pun left Luan's mouth. Benny noticed this, and once he managed to get himself under control, he chimed in with a joke as well. "Aw, don't be like that, Mrs B," he said. "You know what they say;_ mask _a silly question and you'll get a silly answer!" Grinning much too widely, he looked around the room in near-desperation, hoping to find at least a smile from any of his peers. Instead, the only thing staring back at him were unimpressed faces that were mannequin-esque in their blankness._

 _All except for Luan's. No, Luan's face was scrunched up and contorted as though she were fighting back something powerful. It only took a few seconds for the dam to break free and for merry laughter to escape from her lips. "Good one!" she proclaimed, not caring at all that she was alone in her opinion._

 _Benny, immediately afterwards, offered to lend her a hand in her mask-making project._

 _There they sat at four o'clock after school side by side at a black table in the art classroom, a plastic bowl of papier-mâché mixture and a pile of empty balloons on a bed of newspapers sitting between them. If there was one thing that Luan, the professional party clown, was never in short supply of, it was balloons. Together they inflated one after another until they were both out of breath and dizzy and each one was the approximate shape and size of her head, then proceeded to tear pages of the business section and Sunday funnies into ribbons, submerged each strip into the paste, and coated every balloon in several layers of stock market headlines and black and white images of Charlie Brown._

 _"You sure this is gonna work?" she asked, her tone halfway between skeptical and teasing._

 _"Trust me; never underestimate the power of papier-mâché," Benny said. "I've been doing drama since middle school, and you'd be surprised how much of what you see onstage is made from the stuff. I was a set decorator for a production of_ The Hobbit _back in the sixth grade, and we had to build a giant dragon entirely out of papier-mâché and cardboard. It moved its mouth up and down and everything!" His eyes took on an almost faraway gleam as he wistfully remembered those days, and Luan smiled. It did her heart good to see him so happy. "I'm pretty sure that dragon's still in the middle school prop closet, now that I think about it…" he said, more to himself than to Luan. "One of these days we should go over there and see if we can find it."_

 _Luan's heart skipped a beat. Though he had suggested it so casually, she still allowed herself to pretend that he was asking her out on a date. "If we're gonna be looking for a dragon," she jested, "I'll be sure to pack my sword and suit of armor." Benny, predictable as ever, chuckled._

 _Working in tandem, it was not long before each balloon was covered in newspaper. The end products resembled eggs that were laid by some gigantic and long extinct bird. Or perhaps, rather, by a dragon._

 _"Okay, so what now?" Luan asked._

 _Rather than verbalize an answer, Benny smiled conspiratorially and went to his bookbag hung on the back of his chair, undoing the zipper and pulling out a large scarlet book that had a school library sticker on the spine but no dust jacket. "Here, check this out," Benny said as he laid the book on the table, flipping to a random page and waving his hand in Luan's direction, inviting her to come closer._

 _Luan accepted his invitation without hesitation. She went to stand by his side, staring down over his shoulder at the contents of the book, which displayed on its open page a Baroque painting that depicted a bustling township, at the center of which stood a massive wheeled wagon that seemed to function as a sort-of makeshift stage._

 _Atop this stage were eight dancing figures dressed in colorful clothing._

 _All but two of them wore elaborate masks over their faces._

 _"It's called Commedia dell'arte," Benny explained. "It was an early type of improv theatre in sixteenth-century Italy. Troupes would travel from town to town, putting on shows and performing skits, making up all of the dialogue and stories on the spot."_

 _"Ah," Luan said, nodding sagely. "A sort of Renaissance-era version of_ Whose Line is it Anyway _?"_

 _Benny beamed widely at the reference. "Yeah, kind of!" he agreed. "Notice anything about the actors?"_

 _"Well, yeah; they're all wearing masks."_

 _"Correctamundo!" he said. "See, each mask represents a different stock character, so whichever actor wears the one with the hooked nose and exaggerated brows, for example, plays Pantalone, the wealthy merchant." In order to illustrate his point, he helpfully pointed out Pantalone in the painting on the page. "There are loads of different archetypes; Il Dottore, Il Capitano, Colombina… each one has a part to play, and each one wears a mask."_

 _Luan found all of this fascinating, though a closer look revealed that Benny was mistaken. "Well, all of them except for these guys," she said, pointing out the two characters on the stage in the painting whose faces were uncovered, as though they were the only ones who were allowed to truly be themselves. The duo consisted of a young man and woman, both dressed in lavish silk clothing and staring into each others' eyes with intense longing; more of a fit for a soap-opera than a play, in her opinion._

 _'Oh, those two are Innamorati; 'the lovers,'" Benny explained, sounding almost bored. "They just wear lots of makeup instead of masks. They're whole schtick is that they're madly in love with each other. Not very interesting when compared to the others. Kinda like Zeppo in the first five Marx Brothers movies…"_

 _"Hey, Zeppo had his moments," Luan playfully protested. "Remember the 'take a letter' scene in_ Animal Crackers? _That bit had me dying the first time I saw it!"_

 _For a second Benny allowed the scene to replay in his head before he conceded her point by snickering. "Yeah, you're right, that scene's great! '_ Take a letter, Jamison… _'"_

 _"'_ Which one? _'" she asked, finishing the quote from the film. "'_ There are twenty-six of them! _'"_

 _They giggled for a moment before Benny managed to compose himself, staring at Luan with the same sort of emotion that the two lovers who made up Innamorati reserved for each other. Or, at least, that was her interpretation at the time. "Can I just say, Luan," he began. "It makes me so happy that I can namedrop Zeppo Marx, of all people, and you'll know exactly who I'm talking about." Honored beyond words, Luan just smiled while her cheeks went flush. Benny did not seem to notice. "Anyway," he said, snapping the book closed, "I figured it shouldn't be too hard to make some of these sorts of masks ourselves."_

 _Once the newspaper eggs were all dry, Luan and Benny each took a safety pin and stuck them through the spheres' paper shells, popping the balloons that were inside though the structures did not collapse. Following Benny's lead, she took a pair of scissors and a boxcutter and cut out from each one simple shapes which they then crafted together into crude, but recognizable, Venetian masks like those that were in Benny's book._

 _Within the hour, each mask was painted in gaudy shades of red and green and gold and left on the windowsill to dry. Luan, her hands coated in flakes of dried papier-mâché and paint, did a quick headcount and was momentarily alarmed to find that they were one short for there to be enough for each member of the drama club. A tapping came to her shoulder, and Luan breathed a sigh of relief as soon as she turned around; there stood Benny behind her, extending his arm and holding a special mask in his hand, one that had a stub nose and a carbuncle erupting from its forehead. "Here," he said, pressing it into her clasp. "This one's for you." She inspected its craftsmanship, finding it to be of much higher quality than the others. Benny must have taken great care in making it. While still slightly damp, it almost looked like something that could have been purchased from a high-end costume shop. "It's the mask of Arlecchino; the harlequin," he explained. "He was kinda like the Groucho Marx of his time; witty, resourceful, hilarious…I thought if anybody should wear that mask during the fundraiser concert, it should be you."_

 _Her lips quivered and she nearly felt as though she were about to cry, but she managed to contain herself. Instead, she threw her arms around her friend and hugged him tightly, then tied Arlecchino's visage over her face with a length of black ribbon, breathing in deeply the robust scent of newspaper and flour. "It's a perfect fit!" she happily exclaimed._

 _Benny and she then left the art room behind, and as they walked through the school's empty hallways on their way to the parking lot where her parents waited to drive them each to their respective homes, they sang 'Masquerade' from_ The Phantom of the Opera. "Masquerade, paper faces on parade, masquerade, hide your face so the world can never find you…"

* * *

On the afternoon that she returned home following Benny's rejection of her love, Luan stared into the medicine-cabinet mirror above the sink in her family's bathroom and wished with all of her heart that becoming beautiful was as simple as putting on a mask.

Aside from slathering thick coatings of white paint onto her face as part of her clown and mime performances at birthday parties, Luan never really had much experience with applying makeup on her own, which was why she thought that it would be a prudent exercise to practice a bit on the night before her trip to the Opera House with Benny. She had the idea in her head that she should look her best before visiting such a touchstone of culture, but was rapidly coming to terms with the fact that her best simply was not good enough.

As she gazed at her reflection with faint tears stinging her eyes, she saw her many flaws drawn in sharp focus under the bright vanity lights, and a single thought crossed her mind; that no matter how hard she tried to look beautiful, she would only ever succeed in resembling a clown. Raccoon-like mascara encircled her eyes and splotches of rouge colored her cheeks in a garish shade that resembled the permanent blush found on her ventriloquist dummy, the only thing redder being her thin lips that were caked over in a waxy gloss. Sloppy as she was while applying it, her front teeth were similarly stained with a few streaks of crimson.

Her teeth; suddenly she was overtaken by a powerful urge to look upon them. Though she did not feel much like smiling, she still forced the corners of her lips to curl upwards and opened wide her mouth, which was cramped and crowded with teeth and metal. A boarding house without enough space to fit all of its tenants. She remembered being so excited when she first had her braces put in all those years before. Finally, she had thought giddily to herself, no more would her mouth resemble a long forgotten cemetery full of alabaster tombstones that jutted every which-way at strange angles, her gums the rocky and uneven soil in which they were planted. Alas, while her teeth now were undeniably straighter, the braces that crisscrossed like railroad tracks throughout her mouth only added, in their own way, to her overall ugliness. Not much of an improvement, all told, as far as she was concerned.

Worst of all to her was her overbite, which even her braces could do nothing to help. Some parts of herself were just unfixable, she supposed. Benny had told her that she would have looked wrong without them, but he must have just been too nice to tell her the truth of their hideousness.

The kids in elementary school, back when she was in the second grade, used to call her Bugs Bunny. While at first she was naive enough to assume that it was merely a compliment designed to pay tribute to how funny she was, she quickly realized that they were only calling her such a name to make fun of her massive incisors that stood like twin monoliths at the front of her mouth. She remembered a day when her eight-year-old self stood on her tippy-toes, crying, in front of a mirror in one of the school restrooms, pushing upwards at her overbite with her thumb in the vain hope of shifting it back into her gums, but gave up as soon as it started to ache and the faint taste of blood met her tongue. Six years later and Luan still felt, at heart, like that same little girl who stared at her reflection with tears torturing her eyes. She thought that she had moved on from such things; apparently not.

Wasn't she supposed to have become beautiful by now? At least, that was what she had learned from watching the high school students go through their dress-rehearsal of _Honk!_ so many years ago; that her body, in all of its ugliness, was nothing more than a transitory form that would one day grow into a shape that matched her spirit, much like how the Ugly Duckling turned out to be an elegant swan by the end of act II.

That was where her passion for acting was first ignited, there in that dark auditorium with her eyes transfixed by what was transpiring on the stage, to the point where she didn't even realize in the moment that one of the other girls in her class was leaning close behind her with a pair of safety scissors to cut off her ponytail, and while comedy would always remain her first and greatest love, there was something about the idea of pretending to be other people that held a certain appeal to Luan from that day forward.

Something else that the musical had taught her, through the use of an impossibly catchy song entitled 'Warts and All', was that there was somebody out there in the wide wicked world who would love her in spite of her imperfections, and that all she had to do was be patient and wait for that special someone to find her and give her the validation that she had so desperately craved. As the lyrics went, ' _Just think whenever you need boosting, One day you'll be roosting with a mate, Though it may take some time to find 'em, When you do you'll have a ball, 'Cause out there somewhere, Someone's gonna love ya, Warts and all!_ ' She had thought that it was Benny whose love would transform her, but if not him, then who?

She had already been patient for such a long time already, and was growing truly tired of waiting.

With a sigh, Luan turned on the faucet and pooled ice-cold water into her cupped hands before splashing it over her face, letting her makeup run down in streaks that fell onto and stained the porcelain sink's surface with a rainbow's assortment of colors that swirled together. After grabbing a towel from off of the rack behind her, she dried herself off to the best of her ability and made a half-hearted effort to clean up the mess.

Staring back now at her in the mirror was Luan as she truly was, with her freckled and pockmarked face framed by dampened strands of stercobilin hair; a far more disgusting shade than Benny's auburn locks that were the color of oak wood. She felt truly stupid to have ever thought that he could love her in that most powerful way in which she longed for.

She collected the bottles and tubes and palettes of makeup that she had set aside along the rim of the tub and exited the bathroom, the sink still smeared with red and black and blue, as if it were bruised and bleeding.

* * *

Ordinarily, Luan would never have dared to enter into her two eldest sisters' bedroom without Lori's permission, as the seventeen-year-old girl could become dreadfully angry if any of her siblings were to interrupt any of her texting sessions with Bobby, but seeing as neither of them were anywhere to be found from the moment that Luan returned home from school that day, she saw no harm in lingering for a moment in the space after she returned the makeup that she had borrowed ( _stolen_ ) back to its rightful place on her sisters' vanity desk. Taking in the many wonderful sensations that came from standing on their soft carpeted floor, Luan allowed herself to briefly pretend that the room belonged to her.

Wires of white Christmas lights hung in arches down from the ceiling, as if her two eldest sisters were constantly in a state of celebration, and the sweet scent of lavender perfumes hung in the air, a far more pleasant aroma than the pungent glue-like smell of papier-mâché. So bright and cheerful; a sun-dappled meadow that stood in stark contrast to Luan's own bedroom. She wondered if she would become like Lori, so mature and worthy of love, if she were to spend a few nights sleeping in her oldest sister's bed.

From out of the open door of the closet that stood next to the vanity table, a navy-blue arm extended, reaching out and beckoning for Luan to walk closer. She recognized it immediately as the sleeve to Lori's most prized possession, the sweater that Bobby had given her when they had first started dating, and she answered its siren song by going towards the closet and picking it up. The sight of those howling wolves embroidered on its front brought to the forefront of her mind every phone conversation between Lori and Bobby that Luan had ever overheard through the house's thin walls. It was as if their 'I love you's' were still echoing in the room; ghost whispers in late November.

She buried her face into the chest of the sweater and inhaled a lungful of the static electricity that crackled amongst the fibers, hoping that it would spark some sort of positive emotion in her soul as it did for Lori's. It did not. Perhaps if it were one of Benny's clothes, such as the black-and-white striped shirt that he wore when he, dressed as a mime, freed her from an invisible box on the first day that they had met, then it might have meant something. As it stood now, the sweater only served as a symbol of how much farther ahead in life Lori was when compared to her younger sister.

A single loose thread jutted out from the collar, and Luan took to twirling the tuft around her finger, briefly toying with the idea of unraveling the sweater until it was completely undone, though she quickly decided against it. Just because she was miserable, she reasoned, that did not mean that Lori should have to suffer as well. Instead of destroying the garment, she pulled at the yarn only enough for it to reach a length of around six inches and cut it between her teeth, thankful that there was at least one thing that they were useful for.

For reasons that were unclear even to her, she tied the resulting thread into a bracelet around her wrist, resigning herself to having to settle for mere scraps of Lori's happiness.

She returned the sweater back to the closet, glimpsing at all of the other elegant clothes that hung on the racks within. It would have been so easy for her to take one of Leni's dresses from off of a hanger and slip it over her frame, but much like the makeup, she knew that she could never have pulled off such an elegant look for herself. No, it was better that she stick with her itchy tartan skirt and sagging knee-high socks and white blouse with an artificial flower blooming on her chest. More of a costume than an outfit, really. Perfect for a girl who was still so childish.

Deciding that she had spent enough time jealously staring at all of the things that she could never have for herself, Luan left her sisters' bedroom and travelled across the hallway to her own, feeling like Alice ( _though perhaps, with teeth like hers, the March Hare was a far more appropriate character to compare herself to_ ) stepping through the looking glass into a sideways world that was like a funhouse mirror version of Lori and Leni's space. Her room was of the same dimensions as theirs, yet it felt much smaller; rather like her mouth, it was all cramped and cluttered with detritus, such as all of the comedy props that littered around the floor. She was growing so tired of sleeping each night in a circus, so tired of being Arlecchino instead of Innamorati, and as she made her way to her bed she was forced to sidestep the various gag toys that were strewn about, successfully maneuvering around her pair of Groucho glasses only for her foot to land upon a whoopee cushion that had a single small pocket of air left inside, barely enough for it to let out a single pathetic gasp like a dying animal as her show pressed down upon it.

Benny had once told her that he did not much care for the sort of crude humor that such devices provided, though he had also, in the same breath, flattered her by saying that she was the only person he knew who could pull off such jokes. Had he been lying then as well, just as he did when he later told her that there was nothing wrong with her? That must have been the case, because when she placed an inflated whoopee cushion on his chair earlier that week, he did not laugh after he sat upon it and the resulting raspberry sound reverberated throughout the room. Instead, he only cast an awkward glance in her direction with an embarrassed blush on his face. Her hope was to remind him, in her own not so subtle way, that nobody could make him laugh quite like she could, but she had only managed to make him uncomfortable.

Perhaps she had just misjudged his appreciation for her humor just as badly as she had misjudged his love for her. He might have been more correct than he realized when he had said that she was like a sister to him. All of her other siblings thought of her jokes as annoying, groaning with every pun that she delivered, so why should he be any different? Benny was just better at hiding his distaste than they were; nothing more.

She felt imprisoned as she lay on her bed, staring up at the wooden crossbars that supported Luna's mattress on the bunk above her. Her head ached with a pain that rested at the base of her skull, like sand-grains that had sunk to the bottom of a pool of water. More than anything, she wanted to sleep, though she could not help but dread whatever nightmares a day like this one would surely inspire in her mind as soon as she closed her eyes. She thought of Tevye's dream from _Fiddler on the Roof_ , a sequence that used to send her running terrified behind the couch whenever the film version came on the Loud family television on rainy nights when she was younger. The eerie faces of all of Tevye and Golde's ancestors, returned from beyond the grave all pale and decaying to sing a song about Tzeitel's upcoming marriage ( _so much of the conflict in_ Fiddler on the Roof's _story revolved around who was marrying whom_ ), in particular used to frighten her so.

She wondered what her own ancestors would say to her if they were to see her now, laying loveless on her bed. No doubt they would have been awfully disappointed in her.

Before she could consider the question too deeply, she felt her phone vibrate from within her pocket, and her trance was broken. After digging it out, she saw that Benny had sent her a text.

' _Wanna go get dinner somewhere before the show tomorrow? My treat!_ '

She sighed, unsure of whether or not she even still wanted to see the play at all. There was a time, before she knew that Benny did not love her as she loved him, that the thought of the two of them both dressed in formal wear and sitting side by side in red velvet theatre seats with their hands weaved together conjured up the feeling of butterflies in her stomach. It still did, though now it was more akin to how she felt whenever she was sick and on the verge of retching. Rather than text back with an answer, she simply rested her phone screen-down on her chest as it continued to vibrate every few seconds with new messages, thinking to herself that this must have been what heart murmurs felt like.

* * *

Suddenly a shadow was cast over her, and Luan turned her neck to see a figure standing by her bed, silhouetted against the ceiling light with the fan spinning 'round and 'round behind their head in a halo.

It was only after the shadow began to speak that Luan realized who it was. "You're lookin' all tangled up in blue," Luna said in a voice that was so kind and concerned. "You feelin' alright?" Luan had to smile, albeit weakly. She could not help herself; it was like Luna was the human equivalent of a dreamcatcher, capable of ensnaring whatever nightmare Luan found herself in at any given moment within her net and dissipating it. There was nobody else in the family to whom she was closer. Sure, she and the rest of her siblings had their moments; Lincoln and she shared many a laugh together with him as her assistant in Funny Business, she had always seen herself as something of a mentor in the performing arts to Lucy, and Lori-

Well, Lori was usually too busy doing mature, grown-up things like shopping at the mall with Leni or talking to her boyfriend over the phone to pay much mind to a girl with whom she had little in common, but still there were certain rare occasions now and again when Luan would miss the bus after school, and if her parents were unable to give her a ride home then it would fall to Lori to pick her up in vanzilla. On such occasions, their ten-minute drive back to the house would be filled with idle chit-chat about how their days went. Once, Lori had even offered her, with minimal prompting, some helpful advice on a particular line reading that had been giving her a tough time during that day's rehearsal.

Not exactly the most substantial of interactions, but pleasant enough, and it was not as though Luan expected that she should have a deep and meaningful bond with _every_ member of her family. One out of eleven was not such a bad ratio, all told. If Luan were a prism and her siblings each a different source of light waiting to be refracted by her many surfaces, then Lori was a single small Christmas bulb like those that hung on wires in her room, its glow undeniably weak but nevertheless present.

Luna, ironically, was a sun. If there was anybody who could surely make Luan feel better, then it was her roommate. "Not really," Luan admitted as her sister sat by her side. No longer silhouetted against the ceiling lamp, Luan could see that Luna's face was etched in compassion and that a pair of white earbuds were hung around her neck. She must have been in the middle of listening to her MP3 player, as she often did, before noticing that Luan required her full attention. "I told Benny how I felt about him today, and, well, he still wants to be friends, but…" She sighed and sat up, gathered the inner strength necessary to forge ahead, and pressed on. "He kinda rejected me…" With Luna, she did not feel the need to sugarcoat her words with any forced jokes, like she might have if she were speaking with anyone else in her family.

Luna's reaction was swift. "Aw, dude, I'm so sorry," she cooed, pulling Luan into a tight hug and stroking comfortingly at her hair.

Inside of the warm embrace of her sister's arms, Luan felt so safe and warm and loved, if only for a moment. "I made such a fool of myself," she continued, speaking into Luna's shoulder. "And for once, I didn't mean to."

"Hey, c'mon now; I'm sure it didn't go as badly as you think," Luna sympathized. "It takes a lot of courage to do what you did, laying all your feelings out on the line." She was already well aware of the lengths that Luan had gone through to confess her feelings to Benny. The previous night, Luan had disclosed every detail of her plan a hundred or so times to Luna as the pair of them laid awake in their beds, with Luan much too excited to sleep. At the time, Luna shared in her sister's belief that nothing could have possibly gone wrong, and encouraged Luan to follow her heart wherever it led. "At least now you know where you two stand, and you don't have to live with any uncertainty. I never could have put myself out there like that, that's for sure…"

Luan broke away from the hug to stare her sister straight in the eye. "I thought you were gonna confess to Sam today too?" That was, at least, what Luna had told her the night before.

"I'm still sorta working my way up to that," Luna admitted, sounding a bit ashamed of herself. "I mean, I left a note in her locker, but I didn't sign it or anything. Baby steps, you know?"

"What'd it say?"

Luna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Just some lyrics from an old Queen ballad. They seemed appropriate at the time…" By this point, her face was a fiery scarlet color, redder even than Luan's own cheeks were not even a half-hour beforehand.

Even though Luan's own musical tastes did not usually stray too far outside of old showtunes and novelty artists like Doctor Demento, she had still picked up enough about rock n' roll from her sister over the years to have an educated guess as to which song she was referring to. "'Somebody to Love?'"

Luna shook her head and gave a small laugh. "Nah, too obvious; I went with a deeper cut," she said, then began to softly sing. " _Let us cling together as the years go by, oh my love, my love, in the quiet of the night, let our candle always burn, let us never lose the lessons we have learned…_ " Upon finishing her chorus, she glanced to Luan's face, blank aside from a faintly pensive glimmer in her eyes. "That's from 'Teo Torriatte,'" Luna explained. "Funnily enough, it's actually off the same album as 'Somebody to Love', _A Day at the Races_."

While she was not sure of its significance, Luan's eyes went wide at the mention of the album's title, which was shared with a Marx Brothers' comedy. It was another one of Benny's 'absolute classics,' though, as he had once pointed out to her when they watched it together weeks prior, it never quite achieved the same beloved status as some of their other pictures, like _Duck Soup_ or _Horse Feathers_. The movie was always something of a black sheep in their filmography; under-appreciated, undervalued…

Benny was adamant that he loved it just the same, however.

"I should have done what you did, taking the slow and careful approach instead of spilling my heart out and letting it bleed all over." What Luna had called 'courage,' Luan, upon further reflection, had come to think of as brazen stupidity. Perhaps if she had merely slipped her note anonymously through one of the slots on Benny's locker, she could have spared herself the empty feeling in her chest. "I was just so, so sure that it would go perfectly," she said with a sigh. "In my head, everything unfolded like the setting on a stage. Benny and I clicked together so well, and I guess I just assumed that he was my, I dunno…" She trailed off, not quite at a loss for words but unsure if she should vocalize what she was feeling, but ultimately she figured that she had already laid herself bare far too much to turn back now. "My other half, or soulmate; something like that…"

Luna closed her eyes and gave an infinitesimal, yet solemn, nod, as if she were at last coming to understand exactly the full extent of her sister's predicament. "There's a soulmate out there for everyone, Luan," she gently told her. "Just because Benny's not yours, that doesn't mean they're not still out there somewhere, waiting for you. You just have to be patient in the meantime is all." As she spoke, she began to fiddle absentmindedly with the two earbuds around her neck, rolling them between her fingers in the same manner that a young child might have with a smooth glass-stone picked up while walking along a beach. It was something of a nervous habit of hers, most often done while she was in a state of deep contemplation, though what, exactly, she was contemplating was not immediately clear to Luan. Finally, after turning the earbuds over in her fingers one final time, something seemed to click within Luna's head, as she donned a lighthearted smirk and cast a sly glance in Luan's direction. "You know," she began as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the small white MP3 player that the headphones were plugged into, "this little guy has taught me more throughout my life than fifteen years of school combined. 'Seems like anytime I'm feelin' down, there's a song on here by an artist who knows exactly what I'm going through, and who has the exact right words of wisdom to make me feel better." She looked down at the device and click-clacked at its little scrolling wheel, bringing up a long list of musical artists on its bright display. "Here," she said as she pressed one of the earbuds into Luan's palm. "Put this in, and let's you and I listen to some tunes for a bit." Confused, though at the same time hopeful to hear whatever 'words of wisdom' Luna had in mind for her, Luan obliged, fitting the tiny speaker into her inner ear as Luna did likewise with its twin. "I know a song that's so bright and poppy and fun, it's impossible to feel sad while listening to it. Just make sure to pay extra close attention to the lyrics, okay?" With that final bit of introduction out of the way, Luna hit the play button.

For the first five seconds there was nothing but the simple beat of a drum, a bass, and a tambourine thumping against Luan's eardrum. Then, like a burst of adrenaline, a single horn blast sounded, followed by the stunning voice of Diana Ross circa 1966…

" _I need love, love  
_ _To ease my mind  
_ _I need to find, find  
_ _Someone to call mine  
_ _But mama said~_

 _You can't hurry love  
_ _No, you'll just have to wait  
_ _She said love don't come easy  
_ _It's a game of give and take_

 _You can't hurry love  
_ _No, you'll just have to wait  
_ _You got to trust, give it time  
_ _No matter how long it takes_ …"

As rare as it was for Lori to provide Luan with so much as the time of day, let alone with any sort of reassuring word, it was rarer still for Luna to fail in her attempts at cheering her little sister up whenever she was feeling upset. Her judgement was usually spot on when it came to matters of comforting her roommate. However, there was one thing that Luna had woefully misjudged; it was definitely possible for this song to elicit sadness. Luan was living proof.

The music, though bouncy and cheerful in tone, echoed and rebounded throughout the empty cavern of Luan's hollow form like scraps of a popped balloon rattling around inside one of the newspaper eggs that she had crafted so many months ago. Was that all that she was? A papier-mâché girl; amusing to small children, perhaps, but not really worth all that much in the long run, and in need of a fresh coat of paint, or, in her case, a romantic partner, in order to be considered finished?

All of this she already knew. As a matter of fact, 'You Can't Hurry Love' didn't really tell her anything that she hadn't heard six years prior while listening to 'Warts and All' from _Honk!_ It was amazing to her how so many songs, even those separated by decades, seemed to carry the same message; that all she could do was sit still and stand by until her soulmate found her, and that until such a union happened she would remain a work in progress, existing only in the half-light.

These were the lessons that Luan had learned, and that she would never lose.

"It's like I was telling you, dude," Luna said suddenly with a huge grin on her face and a carefree chirp in her voice, bopping her head to the beat and speaking over the music, encouraging Luan with her body language to do the same. "It just takes a little time is all! Diana said it best; ' _you can't hurry love!_ '"

Six years of waiting for her other half to come along was hardly what Luan would have called 'hurrying love,' but by this point she was starting to feel a bit guilty for taking up so much of her sister's time. "Yeah, you're probably right," she said, sounding more resigned than comforted even as she too began to rock back and forth to the rhythm. Her lips felt oh so strained as she mentally donned her Arlecchino mask and stiffly smiled back at her sister, though the grin faded as soon as she saw through her doorway Lori and Leni laughing and talking together as they entered into their bedroom across the hall, their arms weighed down with heavy paper shopping bags from the Royal Woods Mall, each one adorned with a different clothing store logo and each one no doubt brimming with more beautiful garments to overflow their closet with.

* * *

 _ **AN:** Thanks so much to anyone who's reviewed, favorited, followed, or even simply read this story so far! It really means a lot to me, and I hope that you enjoyed this chapter :')_


	3. Chapter 3

**_AN:_** _I can't imagine that many people were chomping at the bit to see this story continue ever since_ Stage Plight _and (to a lesser extent)_ Racing Hearts _have rendered it along with every headcanon I once had about Benny and Luan's relationship pretty much completely irrelevant, but for the sake of not leaving another one of my projects abandoned I've decided to keep it going more-or-less as I had originally intended, with me pretending that those two episodes never happened :^)_

 _I hope you enjoy the next chapter of this overwrought mess of a story!_

* * *

As the eldest daughter in a family of thirteen, Lori had long ago grown used to being looked upon as a rock of strength for her siblings to cling to whenever the sea of life became too intense for them to swim on their own.

Not only had she grown used to it, in fact, but she had even developed a certain pride in her position as something of a de-facto parent within her family. There were times when she fancied herself as the human equivalent of a lighthouse planted there on some lost coastline, tidal waves crashing into her though she stood ever-steady. Rays from her lantern's light reached out across the ocean, nobly steering her siblings away from shipwreck. Who better than she who had already navigated through treacherous waters herself and passed through so many of life's most important milestones? Among other things, she had been the first of the children in her family to learn how to drive, the first to apply to colleges, the first to have a boyfriend…

Although she was only seventeen, she still liked to believe that she had already lived such a full life.

Case in point; when Leni had called and gleefully told Lori that Chaz had reciprocated her love letter by asking her out on a date, Lori did not hesitate in offering her services in preparing her little sister for such a momentous occasion.

Following a quick shopping spree at the Royal Woods Mall, the two teens returned home and went straight to their bedroom to decide upon which clothes should carry such a huge honor. Over a dozen possible contenders were considered then set aside on Leni's bed; a forest-green velvet dress, a pastel-pink jumper, a pleated sky-blue skirt adorned with herons, etc…

Each garment carried its own set of pros and cons, though ultimately Lori had made the absolutely _brilliant_ observation that no article of clothing could ever be more appropriate for the occasion than the pink-and-blue striped sweater that Chaz had once picked out for her.

If ever there was someone who knew the type of sentimental value that a warm sweater, gifted by a sweet boy, could carry within its fibers, then it was Lori. Leni therefor saw fit to follow her advice without question, changing into a simple outfit consisting of black cigarette jeans, white monk shoes with big brass buckles, and, of course, the sweater itself. Her hair went all frizzy with static electricity when she pulled it over her head, though she did not seem to notice until she heard Lori stifle a giggle at the sight. "Perfect," the older girl said as she eyed the outfit up and down in approval. "Casual, but not _too_ casual."

For Leni, there was no greater reward than her big sister's praise. She beamed widely as she grabbed a pearl-handled comb from off of her dresser and set to work on taming her hair back into its usual style. "Just think," she thought aloud with a faraway look in her eyes; a sleepwalker drifting pleasantly through a beautiful dreamscape. "Wouldn't it just be amazing if this sweater could come to mean as much to me as Bobby's does to you?"

The rest of the clothes were thrown unceremoniously into their closet, to be sorted through and hung on wire-hangers at a later time. For now, however, the two girls had bigger things to worry about.

With hair and wardrobe out of the way, all that was left before showtime was makeup, and so Lori sat Leni down in the chair by the vanity table and set to work on turning her face into a canvas.

"Thank you again _so much_ for helping me out with this," Leni said while her sister brushed subtle shades of rouge onto her cheek. "I'd have tried doing it myself, but, well, you know what mom always says; I still venture a little too hard into 'clown territory.'" Nervous laughter sputtered out of her mouth before she abruptly cut it off, remembering that she was supposed to be keeping her face as still as possible to prevent the makeup from smearing. Her visage hardened into something stony and expressionless ( _mask-like_ ) even as the rest of her body pulsated, a side-effect of her knee anxiously bouncing up and down, up and down…

Lori found all of this adorable, albeit in a strangely pitiable sort of way, though of course she could not help but to empathize with her sister. For her to look upon Leni's face was to look as though into a mirror dimly, as not even a year prior it was Lori herself who was seated in that very same chair, her stomach tied in knots and her heartbeat racing as she applied concealing cream over her acne and red gloss onto her lips.

What a long way she had come.

"It's no trouble," she soothed, finishing with the rogue and moving onto the mascara, only barely noticing that the cap to the bottle was already ever-so-slightly loosened. "Just try to relax, okay?"

Such a request only served to make Leni tense up even more. "Sorry, I'm just a little nervous is all."

"Believe me, I understand," Lori said with a knowing smile. "I remember being just as nervous before my first date with Bobby, and look how _that_ turned out!"

That, at least, inspired a small grin from the younger girl, and she looked up at her sister with eyes that were so much like those of a doe lost within an unfamiliar forest, one with timber wolves hiding behind every other tree. "Any advice?" she meekly asked, her voice occupying that liminal space between hope and desperation. "You know, since you've, like, actually been through this before?"

Though she was careful not to let it show in her expression, Lori inwardly let out a small cheer ( _there was always so much to celebrate within her room_ ) at the request. These were the moments for which she lived; moments where she could actually _be_ that shining beacon that she saw herself as in her fantasies.

Moments where she could be useful.

Lori halted her decoration of her sister's face and wracked her brain for a morsel of wisdom best suited for the occasion, mentally sorting through the clutter of dating tips that she had read throughout her life on the back pages of magazines and on the home-screens of clickbait sites; tips on what to wear, what types of restaurants to go to, what kinds of movies to see should the date take place within a theater…

All very, _very_ important stuff, of course, but not quite appropriate for Leni's question. Instead, Lori had a much simpler piece of advice in mind. Something that only somebody who had already experienced the highs and lows of a committed relationship could impart.

"The most important thing that I can tell you is to relax, try to have fun, and above all; just be yourself."

For a moment Leni simply sat there in her unfinished makeup and processed Lori's words, baring a slightly disappointed look upon her face. "…Is that all?" she asked. She sounded as though she half-expected her sister to burst into laughter and yell, ' _Gotcha!_ ' Surely surviving through an event as pivotal as her first date could not possibly be so simple.

Lori, however, clung to her convictions. "I know it's kinda cliché, but yeah; that's pretty much all there is to it. He's gotta like you for you, and if he doesn't, well, then it's just not meant to be." Her wisdom reaffirmed, and the matter settled as far as she was concerned, Lori brought the mascara brush back to her sister's lashes, intending to pick up where she had left off.

Before she could apply even a single brushstroke, however, Leni spoke up once more, her voice at first quiet and timid but growing more and more panicked with each passing word. "But…but what should we talk about? What if I say the wrong thing? Or, even worse, what if we just sit in awkward silence all night? What if-"

"Leni, you're overthinking this," Lori gently interrupted.

"I know I am, but I can't help it," Leni seethed through teeth that were clenched in frustration. In her anxiety, she pressed her palms against her eyes, intending perhaps only to stem the flow of tears but inadvertently smearing her eyeshadow and mascara. In a single instant, all of Lori's hard work was undone. Not that it mattered to the older girl. She was more concerned for her little sister's emotional state. "This is all so overwhelming. I never thought this would happen for me, and now that it has, I want to make sure I don't, like, mess it up before it even begins."

"Never thought _what_ would happen for you?" Lori asked, her curiosity piqued. To see Leni in such a fragile state was a rare sight, even for someone who spent as much time with her as Lori did.

"You know…" Beneath the layers of rogue painted onto her face, Leni's cheeks began to burn ever-redder out of shame. " _Dating_." She sighed, brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and continued. "I'm not mature like you are, Lori. I'm not strong like Lynn, smart like Lisa, funny like Luan…she's always able to think of something clever to say; I can barely get through a conversation without making a fool of myself."

This too all seemed very familiar to Lori. "It's not healthy to compare yourself to others like that," she said sadly. "You'll never be happy if you do. We all have our strengths, you included."

"Right, and I mean, yeah, I'm pretty enough, I guess, and I've got good fashion sense…" They were statements spoken without ego, and certainly not born from high self-esteem judging from the dispassionate manner in which they were said. "But that's just surface-level stuff. I just don't know what Chaz could possibly see _in_ me…" Looking down at her hands now stained with black, Leni realized how she had smudged her makeup, which suddenly seemed to become her top concern. "I'm sorry Lori," she said under her breath, resigned. "You tried so hard to make me beautiful, and I went and ruined it."

"That's okay, Leni," Lori softly assured her. "In fact…" She placed the mascara-brush back into its bottle and set it aside, exchanging it for a few cotton pads from the vanity table drawer, which she then used to wipe away all of the remaining makeup from her sister's face until it was unadorned but no less lovely. "You don't even need the makeup. You're already so beautiful; inside and out." Stepping aside, she allowed her sister a full view of her reflection in the vanity mirror. "You know what I think Chaz will see in you on your date tonight?" Leni, unsure of whether or not the question was rhetorical, slowly shook her head. "The same thing that I, along with everyone else who knows you, see; a kind, sweet, wonderful girl who has so much to offer."

"But what if he doesn't? What if, even after he gets to know me, he doesn't want to be my boyfriend after all?"

"Even if he doesn't, either because he turns out to be a jerk or because you two just aren't compatible, that doesn't necessarily say anything about you as a person. Sometimes these things just don't work out, and when that happens, well…" She shrugged, all carefree and nonchalant. " _C'est la vie_."

"Why would I say, ' _La vie_?'"

Given the somber tone of their conversation, Lori thought it best not to chuckle at her sister's misunderstanding. Instead, she offered a kind smile and a hand to rest on Leni's shoulder. "No Leni, _C'est la vie_ just means, 'That's life.' You know, like, _que será será_ ; 'whatever will be, will be…'"

At last, Leni was able to smile once again, albeit hesitantly, and it was in seeing that grin that Lori knew that another ship had successfully been sailed into safe harbor. "That's a song, right? I think I heard it once in an old movie…"

On any other day, Luan might have heard her sisters' conversation from her room across the hallway. Today, however, the only thing that Luan heard rattling around in her inner ears was Journey's song _Separate Ways,_ at Luna's recommendation. She thought that her little sister would get a real pick-me-up from hearing Steve Perry belt at the top of his lungs, ' _Someday, love will find you_ …"

* * *

By the time Luan was seated at the dining-room table for supper later that night, her inner chest felt as though it were a floodplain caught between torrential downpours, dry and barren, devoid of life and feeling.

Idly she picked with her fork at the fish fry that lay on the plate before her, peeling away at the breading and tearing apart at the white flesh, though she did not bring any of the food to her mouth. Her appetite nonexistent, she merely sat and half-listened to her parents and siblings amiably chatting amongst themselves. Aside from Luan, of course, and Leni, who was nowhere to be found, and though she was curious as to her older sister's whereabouts, she did not feel much like speaking up and asking as to where she was.

Amongst the clatter of surrounding voices and the sounds of chewing and silverware scraping against ceramic, Luan thought that she could hear her father ask, "You okay, sweetie? You haven't told a single joke all night."

On the off-chance that she had not merely imagined his concern, Luan forced a queasy smile and answered. "Yeah, just a little tired is all. Rehearsal today was pretty crazy." She wracked her brain for a joke, _any_ joke, that she could shoot out from her lips like a signal flare that all was well. She had already put Luna through the emotional labor of having to comfort her, to little benefit, and did not wish to burden anyone else with her problems. Besides, if Luna could not manage to make her feel truly better, then she doubted that anyone else at the table could. "One of our actors fell through the floor…"

"Really!? Is he okay?"

Luan's punchline came automatically. "Yeah, he's fine. It was just a _stage he was going through_. Get it?" Hard as she tried to inject the punchline with a sprig of cheer, never before had her delivery sounded so lifeless. Not that anybody seemed to notice, a fact for which she was thankful. Her father laughed. Most everyone else groaned. Dinner carried on as usual.

Glancing to her left, Luan saw Luna staring back at her with a genial smile. "I gotta say; lame as they are, it's good to hear you crackin' jokes again, dude," she quipped in a half-whisper before patting Luan reassuringly on the back. There may also have been a slight trace of pride in that grin; pride in being the one to return her sister to high spirits when nobody else could, as she had done so many times before. "I told ya so; sometimes the right song can save your life."

Luan saw fit to allow her roommate to enjoy her sense of accomplishment, however unearned it might have been, and quietly returned to picking at her meal, wishing to carry on with the rest of the supper in silence. Afterwards, she fully intended to duck unnoticed back into her room to change into her pajamas, listen to some more music, and drift to sleep.

"Hey guys!"

Leni's voice, all bright and sing-song like that of a cartoon princess in an old animated film, came fluttering into the house, punctuated by the sound of the front door shutting behind her. She came walking into the dining-room baring a contented smile upon her face, a spring in her step, and, much to Luan's confusion, a red-and-yellow varsity jacket several sizes too big draped around her shoulders. Her appearance, and not least of all the proud manner in which she carried herself, reminded Luan of portraits that she had seen in history textbooks throughout her schoolyears of great kings and queens cloaked in maroon velvet capes as large as stage curtains.

Before Luan could turn to Luna and ask for an explanation, Lori squealed in delight and rushed up from her seat to practically tackle her roommate in a hug. Much like with the comedian and the musician, the two oldest Loud sisters shared their own special bond as well. "You're back! How'd it go? Tell me _everything!_ "

"It was totes amazing," Leni happily chirped as she and Lori took their seats across from Luan and Luna at the table. As she became comfortable in her chair, her father wordlessly offered her the large serving platter of fish that had been set down near his cup, but Leni simply held up her hand and mouthed a quick, ' _No thanks_ ' in refusal. Clearly, she had only joined in the dinner to share her experiences and not to partake in any food. "We had dinner at Jean Juan's, got some ice-cream, went for a walk through the park…" Her eyes took on a distant and fanciful sort of quality; already nostalgic for events which had unfolded only a few hours prior. "Best of all, at the end of the night, Chaz walked me to the door, gave me his Letterman Jacket, and even kissed me on the cheek. Such a gentleman; it was like something out of a movie!" She finished off her story with a cheerful sigh, and suddenly the reason for her absence became perfectly clear to Luan. _Of course_ the kind, sweet, and wonderful Leni had succeeded where Luan had failed and managed to score a date with her crush. If anyone deserved such happiness, then it was Leni.

"That's great sweetie!" their mother said, and everyone else at the table voiced their congratulations as well. Even Luan offered a meagre grin and nod in her sister's direction, unwilling as she was to allow her sour mood to dampen Leni's perfect night. For all of her many flaws, too numerous to count, she did not wish to add ' _selfishness_ ' to the list. In truth though, she was secretly hoping for the conversation to drift naturally towards other topics.

Unfortunately for her, Leni had other plans. "Thanks mom!" she said before turning her attention towards the rest of her siblings. "But enough about me. How was everyone else's day? Did this whole 'love-letter' thing work out as well for you guys as it did for me?" Like a detuned radio all of a sudden cutting out entirely, the cacophony of white noise that had been ever-present during the dinnertime ceased completely and room went dead-quiet, all if not for Lily cutely babbling in her high-chair at the end of the table, oblivious to the sudden shift in mood and her face covered with mashed peas and carrots. At her side was her most beloved and trusted companion outside of her family; her teddy bear, which she then proceeded to hug closely. "I'm happy to see that at least _somebody_ else found their soulmate," Leni quipped with a small chuckle dancing alongside her voice.

Another beat of silence followed, during which all of the other children at the table glanced awkwardly to one another, before Lisa was the first to speak up. "David told me that he would prefer to keep our relationship strictly professional." To anyone outside of the Loud family, her tone might have come across as coldly indifferent, but to her sisters and brother, who had long ago attuned to her very particular emotional wavelength, her distress was obvious. She only ever sounded so disappointed whenever one of her experiments failed.

Lana's was a much more readily apparent type of sadness, like that of a kenneled puppy in an animal shelter. Her bottom lip slightly quivered as she spoke. "Skippy said I was gross for liking him." Luan saw that lower lip bare that same pout whenever she watched her little sister catch a frog at the park only for it to slip through her fingers and escape. "And not in a good way…"

Lola, in contrast, seemed more angry than heartbroken. " _Winston_ , the big dummy, wasn't interested," she said simply, spitting his name from her mouth with bile. Her voice took on the same bratty stink every morning of December 25th, whenever she discovered that Santa had not left her all of the toys from her Christmas list underneath the tree.

"Aw, I'm sorry guys," Leni sympathized. "To tell you the truth though, you three might be a _little_ too young to be thinking about this sort of stuff anyway," she added with a giggle.

"Yeah, I'd just stick to making mud-pies, competing in beauty pageants, and researching quantum physics if I were you," Lynn chimed in, leaning over and good-naturedly tousling Lana's hat, much to the younger girl's embarrassment. "Much less complicated than dating."

Moving swiftly along, Leni then turned her focus towards Lucy. "How about you? How'd things go with Silas?" Apparently, eight years of age was not too young for romance.

 _So what's my excuse?_

The question formed as a whisper within the very back of Luan's mind.

Before an answer could manifest itself, Lucy did as she so often did and sighed morosely before recounting the events of her day. "Silas told me that he likes me back…" Though Lucy was rather like Lisa in that she was not exactly known for being emotionally expressive, Luan could still pick up on the slight somberness, which was even more pronounced than usual, that colored her tone.

"You don't seem too enthused about it," Lori observed.

"It's just that…" Lucy paused, sighed once more, and pressed on bravely. "It's just that I've been thinking about Rocky a lot more lately. I thought I was over it, but I think I still kind of…have a little crush on him…"

Ah yes; _Rocky._ Luan could clearly remember the little red-haired boy with his freckled face and buck teeth. She had never seen her little sister so outwardly happy than she was while in his company, all ablush and demure and smitten with puppy-love. Luan also remembered how she and the rest of her sisters had tried so hard to help the little raven girl fly by playing matchmaker between the pair, only for their plans to backfire spectacularly. Luckily for Lucy, Rocky and she had managed to come together regardless, and she had emerged from the experience having learnt a valuable lesson; that the key to winning Rocky's affection was by staying true to herself.

That she was perfect just the way she is.

The same could clearly not be said for Luan, much as big-hearted Benny had tried to make her feel better by assuring her that such was the case. After all, she had been more _herself_ with him than he had been with practically anyone else, and he still only wanted to be her friend. As Luan listened to the rest of her family offer Lucy their support and reassurances, she could almost feel herself shrink in her chair, all of a sudden hyperaware of how stunted she was as a person. She wondered which was more pathetic; that Benny had rejected her, or that, even though she loved her little sister, she was jealous of an eight year old girl for having already found love at such a young age?

Before Luan could consider the question for too long, she heard Lori say in a teasing tone, "Lincoln, your turn." Realizing that she had mentally drifted off for the past few moments, Luan refocused her attention towards her brother. "How'd Paige react to your letter?"

In contrast to his younger sisters, his was not a sorrowful reaction, at least not overtly so. Instead, he simply gave a small shrug of his shoulders and said, "She'd rather we just stay friends." His tone was one of light disappointment, but he mostly came across as rather relaxed about the whole prospect, if anything.

That was something that Luan had always deeply admired about her brother; he was so capable of keeping his composure, apparently even after an event which surely must have torn his heart in twain.

Luan could still easily see through his strong facade, however. As someone who was herself trying to put up a calm and collected front for the sake of not upsetting her family, she felt that she could see a lot of herself in her brother. She certainly doubted that anybody else at the table could relate to his plight quite as well as she could. Therefor, it fell on her to offer him some genuine words of sympathy. "Lincoln," she said, her voice nearly cracking as she turned to face down the table to where her brother sat, "I am so sorry that happened to you…" At the sound of her voice, so wrenched with pain, Luna pointedly looked over to her sister, wearing an expression of concern, as if realizing that the girl by her side was not the same girl who earlier had cheerfully told a joke about actors falling through stages.

Lincoln, ever one to put on a brave face, remained unperturbed. "It's okay," he said, maintaining his thick-skinned demeanor. "She was pretty nice about the whole thing, and she was still willing to hang out at Gus' Games and Grub with me. We played DDR, ate some pizza…it was fun!" Though he put on an admirable performance, Luan still had to wonder how much it must have really hurt her brother to have eaten and played with the girl who rejected him. She could not even imagine her and Benny in the same theatre without wanting to cry.

"Well, for the record," Lori interjected, "I always thought that you and Ronnie-Anne make for a way cuter couple anyway."

She punctuated her statement with a wink that brought a light tinge of red to the young boy's face. "Ronnie-Anne and I are _not_ a couple," he insisted, though his blush said otherwise, and Luan was forced to reconsider her reading of his situation. Perhaps he genuinely was not as upset about Paige's rejection as she had believed, if not because he was the possessor of an inner-strength that Luan lacked, then because he had already found his perfect partner, one who was so much better suited to him than Paige was.

Much like with Lucy, Luan could not help but envy her little brother, who had already found success in matters of the heart at such a young age. Such a more complete person than she was; at eleven years old, he had even already experienced his first kiss, many months before. Luan could not make such a claim for herself.

What was she, then? A teenaged dragon, perhaps, like that which Benny had constructed from papier-mâché and cardboard when he was in middle school. Locked away in a dark storage closet somewhere amongst fake plastic trees and tattery Halloween costumes and still waiting to hatch from a newspaper egg even as so many of her siblings, both younger and older, flew in sapphire skies high above her…

"Lynn," Leni began, "how about-"

"Hey Len," Luna gently interrupted, "d'ya think we could maybe talk about something else for a bit?"

…How Luan longed to join her sisters and brother in the sun, as it was becoming so cramped within the confines of her shell. She wanted nothing more than to open wide her mouth and let flare out the breath of fire that smoldered within the kiln of her stomach and burn that papier-mâché prison into cinders so that she too could fly freely…

"Why?" Leni asked, clueless. "I just wanna hear about everyone's day is all."

Lori, who was much more adept at picking up on subtleties in conversation than her roommate, took Luna's side. "Actually, yeah, maybe Luna's right. Let's change the subject. You guys are not going to _believe_ what happened with Carol Pingrey in algebra today."

…But no; way down deep in the floodplain of her chest, a rain began to fall, quelling that inner flame and replacing it with something far more pathetic to behold…

"Honey? Are you okay?"

Luan did not even realize that tears were silently rolling down her cheeks until she heard her mother's soft question.

In an instant the conversation around the table ceased once more, as all of a sudden Luan could feel the weight of twenty eyes staring at her with pity in their gaze. Amazing how the weight of twenty eyes could sometimes feel more crushing than that of two-thousand gathered to watch her perform in a play. There was that pressure again; to think of a joke, _any_ joke, but none came to her mind, no matter how hard she wracked her brain. "Y-yeah," she choked out instead, hoping to fill that horrible silence until she could think of something more substantial to say. "I'm just…I'm just…" Fresh tears flowed with every syllable. She looked around at all of the worried faces staring back at her, none of which hurt Luan more to see than that of Leni. Only moments ago the older girl was smiling without a care in the world, having just experienced one of the greatest nights of her life, and Luan felt an unbearable guilt at having taken away her sister's happy night and making it about her. A last-ditch effort to shift the attention back to where it was deserved was in order, by Luan's reckoning. "…I'm just so happy for you, Leni," she said, barely managing to get the words out as she attempted to pass off her tears as being born from joy. "Chaz is a very lucky guy to have met a girl like you…" Even through the veil of water over her eyes, she could still tell that her act was fooling no one, and so she figured that it was a safer bet to simply make her exit. "May I be excused?" she asked quietly in the vague direction of her mother.

Without waiting for a response, she got up from the table and returned to her room.

Her parents followed after her.


	4. Chapter 4

"I know that this is a cliche, but sometimes things are cliche for a reason; there are plenty of fish in the sea, Luan, and I know that someday you're going to find someone who sees you for the beautiful, hilarious girl that you are."

Rita's words scarcely registered to Luan, who was seated on her bed with her parents on either side of her. She was more preoccupied with fiddling around with her makeshift bracelet crafted from the stolen yarn she had torn from Lori's sweater. Over the course of the previous half-hour or so ( _she had lost track of time_ ), while her parents rattled off their soothing phrases and cold comforts, she would pull at the knot until the string was tight around her wrist, cutting off the flow of blood to her hand before loosening the bind and repeating the process over and over again. Occasionally, so as not to worry her parents even more than she already had, she would voice simple words of acknowledgment, just as a matter of showing that her heart were technically still beating. "Okay," she whispered, despite only having barely heard what her mother had said.

"…Do you think we could hear a joke?" her father asked hopefully. "You know how much we love your jokes, honey."

Luan could see empty flattery from a mile away. No doubt he was simply looking for some reassurance that his task was completed and that his little girl was ready to move on from her pain, and while ordinarily she might have indulged him his request, she supposed that there was no use in pretending to be emotionally stable after running from the dining room with tears in her eyes. "I'm not really in the mood," she quietly sighed. "I'm sorry."

Her parents shared a concerned glance to one another, as though debating whether or not to press the issue. After a beat, however, they must have decided that it was best to leave their daughter alone for a while. "It's okay, kiddo," her father said. "Nobody expects you to be the funny girl all the time."

Each parent gave their daughter a big hug and a kiss to each side of her head before standing up from the bed and leaving the room, softly shutting the door behind them. Luan could faintly hear them tell the rest of her family gathered worried outside of her door that their little girl needed some alone time, followed by the sound of twenty-two feet ( _or, at least, that was how many Luan assumed that she could hear_ ) walking forlornly away. Now on her own, Luan grabbed Luna's MP3 player from where she had set it earlier on her nightstand and placed the headphones into her ears, scrolling through the menus in search of a particular song, one that she had been longing to hear for the past few hours. Obscure though the piece of music undoubtedly was, she had faith that Luna of all people would certainly have it downloaded onto her device's memory. Sure enough, she quickly found what she was looking for; "Save Me," by Aimee Mann. She clicked 'play' on the little scrolling wheel and allowed her head to be filled with the soft strums of an acoustic guitar.

She went to lay on her back, intending to let the song carry her off to sleep, when suddenly a new shadow was cast over her, one that was of a different shape than Luna's silhouette against the ceiling light. After squinting her eyes and focusing her vision, Luan could see Lori towering over her, her face etched with concern. A surprising sight; it was not every day that the two girls shared in each others company with no one else around. The older girl took a seat at her little sister's side, catching a worried glimpse of that familiar shade of blue tied around her wrist, clearly recognizing yet saying nothing regarding its origin. "…Whatcha listenin' to?" Lori asked after a brief spell of calm silence.

The song was gentle enough for Luan to have made out the question even over the music, and while for a moment she toyed with the idea of pretending to have not heard her sister so that she might then choose to leave her be, ultimately after a moment's hesitation she let out a resigned sigh, took out one of her earphones, and pressed it into Lori's hand, inviting her to listen for herself. Not that she expected the older girl to relate to the song as well as she could, of course.

Lori placed the headphone into her ear just as a warbling and painfully pretty female voice began to sing.

" _You look like a perfect fit  
_ _For a girl in need of a tourniquet_

 _But can you  
_ _Save me_

 _Come on and  
_ _Save me_

 _If you could  
_ _Save me_

 _From the ranks  
_ _Of the freaks  
_ _Who suspect  
_ _They could never love anyone…"_

Almost in spite of her better instincts, Luan felt a sudden desire to open her mouth while there in the presence of her older sister. "You know what movie this is from?" she found herself asking, interrupting the flow of lyrics and pausing the music as she sat up. Lori, unsure of why such a question mattered, could do nothing but shake her head in reply. " _Magnolia_ ," Luan explained. The title alone brought a rush of memories flooding into her head. "Benny invited me over to his place once to watch it with him. He kept insisting that it was one of the best movies ever made, so I checked out the trailer online and thought, 'Hey, John C Reilly's in this. He's a funny guy. I bet it'll be worth at least a laugh or two…" She paused her story to sniffle sadly, imagining that she must have looked so pathetic and ridiculous laying there as more tears began to well up in her eyes.

"And?" Lori eventually prompted.

"…And it was one of the stupidest, most pretentious, most _depressing_ films I'd ever seen, but I didn't even care. It was three hours long, so that was three hours where Benny and I could sit in the dark, and I could pretend we were on a movie date." All at once that night came back to her; memories of her and Benny lazing around in his small bedroom, sharing jokes and stories and popcorn all in equal measure as the film played on his television. No longer did those memories bring her any joy, however. What was once silver had become tarnished over in rust. "All of Benny's movies are on VHS, you know," she continued. " _Magnolia_ was so long it needed to be split across two tapes. I used to like to think that me and Benny were kinda like those tapes; two halves of the same whole, like we completed each other, but I guess I was wrong."

As though the answer were not already obvious, Lori gently asked, "I take it things didn't go so well with Benny today, huh?"

"…He said I was like a sister to him," Luan said with another sniffle, and when next she blinked, those tears which had pooled over her eyes went streaming quietly down her face.

"Well, it sounds to me like you must really mean a lot to him then."

Though clearly heartbroken at seeing her little sister in such a dismal state, Lori somehow managed to sound almost cautiously optimistic, to Luan's genuine surprise, though upon further reflection she supposed that _of course_ Lori would not understand her heartache. After all, how could she? She had never dealt with rejection as Luan had, as far as Luan knew. "I guess so," the younger girl nevertheless passively agreed under her breath, not wishing to argue.

"You _guess_ so?" Lori repeated, putting on a show of sounding incredulous. "If a guy told me that he loved me like a sister, I'd literally be honored beyond words."

Perhaps this was why, Luan mused to herself, Lori never spent much time with her. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the older girl could not relate to her little sister in any meaningful way. "It's just not the same…"

On that point, at least, Lori conceded. "Well, yeah, that's true," she admitted, though she was quick to add, "But that doesn't mean that Benny loves you any less."

"Yeah right," Luan scoffed.

"I'm serious! Different types of love can all be equally strong, whether its romantic, platonic, familial…I mean, what, do you think I love Bobby more than I love you?" The question was posed as if it were completely ridiculous, and Lori even let out a little laugh as soon as it left her mouth, in effect encouraging her sister to do the same.

Luan, however, did not laugh. "Well, yeah, of course you do." So casual and detached. She could very well have been commenting upon some undeniable fact of nature. A little sing-song rhyme even appeared out of nowhere in her head; _Water is wet / the sky is blue / Lori loves Bobby more than she loves you_. Peeking over, she saw a look of near-unfathomable hurt come to her sister's face. "And hey, believe me, I get it," Luan explained. "I mean, you've got ten sisters, and there's only one Bobby. It's not like I expect you to be my best friend or anything. It's just that…" By this point, her breath had become shaky and irregular, and the slow trickles of tears pouring down from her eyes had become mighty rivers. "…It's just that I see the way you are with Bobby, and how happy he makes you, and I just thought that Benny could do the same for me. I'd even-" Cutting herself off before she could finish her sentence, Luan turned her head to face the opposite wall in a vain attempt to hide her newfound blush. "Never mind, forget it."

"What?" Lori urgently pressed. "What is it?"

"I can't say it," Luan insisted. "You'll laugh at me, and for once I don't want you to."

"Luan, I swear on my life that I won't laugh at you." Never before had Luan heard her oldest sister speak to her with such grave seriousness, though her tone immediately melted into something much more gentle and soothing. "Look, I know that you and I have never been exactly close," she said, sounding so very full of regret. "But you can tell me anything. I mean that."

Without anything of value to lose ( _only those remaining few shreds of her dignity, she supposed_ ), Luan decided to share what was surely one of her most embarrassing secrets. "Sometimes, whenever I'm alone, I like to fantasize about me and Benny together like you and Bobby; going on dates, laying our heads on each others shoulders, k-kissing…" Her voice was barely audible, but she dared not speak any louder. If she did, not only might someone else have heard her, but she may very well have broken down completely into pained sobbing. "In my daydreams, I always call him…" One final deep breath entered her lungs as she braced herself for imminent humiliation. "Benny…Boo-Boo-Bear." To her genuine surprise, she did not hear so much as a chuckle escape from Lori's mouth. Looking up into her sister's face, Luan expected to see her fighting back a smile, yet the older girl remained stone-faced and solemn, and for that Luan was grateful. It made her feel as though she could open up even further. "It's like there's this empty space inside my heart," she continued, clutching at her chest. "I just feel so…so _unloveable_ and _ugly,_ all of the time." The terms were spat from her mouth with pure and visceral self-loathing coating every syllable. "I guess I thought that if Benny could see enough inside of me to love, then maybe I finally could too."

With that, the levees surrounding the floodplains in Luan's chest well and truly broke, and she buried her face into her palms to weep. Suddenly she could see only darkness as her hands covered her eyes in a futile effort to stem the newly flowing tears. All was shadow for Luan for a moment, that was until she felt Lori's arm sling across her shoulder, pulling the young comedienne into the older girl's warm embrace. When Luan opened her eyes again and allowed her vision to readjust to the light, she could have sworn that her sister almost had a certain glow about her; not quite a lighthouse, as Lori might have liked to think of herself, but Luan supposed that even a tiny Christmas bulb could shine just as brightly in the pitch-black. "I know how you feel, Luan."

"How could you _possibly_ know how I feel?" She did not mean for the question to sound so vicious. It was merely that she could not fathom how Lori, who was so perfect and who led such a fulfilling life, could ever understand the full extent of her pain.

Rather than answer right away, Lori instead took out her phone, tapped at the screen as she clicked through the photos stored in her camera roll, and finally held the device up in front of Luan's newly opened eyes. "Remember her?" she asked.

The girl pictured on the display wore a blue sleeveless shirt with a white collar. She had thick, coke-bottle glasses magnifying her eyes, and red barrettes struggling to tame her frizzy hair. Acne scarred her cheeks, which were pulled back in a wide and almost pained smile that showed off her crooked teeth, which looked as though they were barely being held together by metal braces as thick as train tracks.

The girl in the picture was Lori, aged fourteen, during what she sometimes referred to as her 'awkward phase.' Luan, who was eleven at the time, remembered it well. "Why are you showing me this?" she asked, confused as to what the photo had to do with anything, even though she had a guess. Was her sister suggesting, perhaps, that Luan was simply in the middle of her own 'awkward phase?' That one day the Ugly Duckling would grow into a magnificent swan, just as had happened in _Honk!_ , and just as had happened with Lori? Luan did not think she could stomach hearing such a lesson. Not again.

"Because," Lori explained as she placed the phone back into her pocket. "When I was your age, I felt the exact same way as you do now; like I wasn't worth loving, because of my braces, my hair, my acne…" A single laugh, bitter and utterly devoid of joy, escaped from her mouth. "Sometimes," she said, her tone conspiratorial, as if she were sharing a long suppressed and disgraceful secret, "I'd stand in front of the bathroom mirror for hours, trying to make myself look like the models in my magazines, who were all so perfect, but I could never make myself beautiful like they were."

Luan, who still had a few nigh-imperceptible streaks of makeup lining the outer edges of her face from her own earlier failed attempt at self-beautification, felt a twinge of sympathy for her sister. "I had no idea…"

Lori shrugged. "I was pretty good at hiding it, just like you've been trying to do. I shouldn't have; I should have opened up to someone, the same way that you are right now. You're just a braver person than I was, I guess." Returning to her main point, she pressed on. "Eventually, I got it in my head from those magazines that all I _really_ needed to be happy was a boyfriend, you know; somebody who could show me that I was worth loving. It, um, didn't work out. Boys didn't really seem interested in me at the time…"

At once, all of the jigsaws clicked into place within Luan's mind. "I think I know where this is going…"

"You do?"

"Yeah," Luan sighed. "You're going to tell me that eventually you found Bobby, and that he was the one to show you that you had value, and that one day someone will come along and do the same for me if I just wait." It was all Luan could do to keep herself from rolling her eyes, and she went back to her game of pulling at her bracelet until it was as tight as a tourniquet around her wrist.

Just as Luan could start to feel the tips of her fingers going numb, Lori reached out her hand to gently lay it atop Luan's. Though her sense of touch was dulled, Luan could still make out the warmth in her sister's caress, and she immediately stopped tugging at the yarn. "That's not what I was going to say," Lori said simply.

"Then what?"

"I'm going to tell _you_ what I wish someone would have pulled me aside and told _me_ when I was your age." With that, Lori lifted her hand from off of Luan's wrist and placed it instead on her younger sister's shoulder. "Look, I know that the people in this family can go a little, um, _overboard_ at times when it comes to romance." Her tone was colored in regret. "But I'm telling you now; you are your own movie, Luan, not half of one. You don't need Benny, or anyone else, to make you, 'Complete.' All you need is to see the value within yourself, because it's not dependent on whether or not you're in a relationship. It's an inherent part of who you are. You're already whole on your own, just like I was before I met Bobby, as much as I love him, and just like I'd continue to be if we ever broke up, God forbid."

By this point, both sisters were crying at equal force, though no longer were Luan's tears quite as sorrowful as they had been only moments before. She threw her arms around Lori in an appreciative hug, and even though she knew deep down that they were never likely to have as honest and pure a moment as this together again, that did not matter.

Luan knew then that the love shared between her and Lori was vast and deep enough to overflow the great lakes.

She could have stayed like that for hours, but alas, she felt her own phone vibrate within her pocket, and she felt it necessary to answer. Reluctantly, she broke away from the hug to dig the device out and read the message alight on the screen.

' _Are you sure you still want to go to the play with me? I understand if you'd rather just get a refund for the tickets. Whatever you'd rather do, I'm okay with it.'_

"Who's texting you?" Lori asked.

"It's Benny, asking about tomorrow." With a discouraged sigh, Luan shut her phone off and placed it on the bed, not wishing to deal with any of Benny's questions at the moment.

"You're still gonna go to the play with him, aren't you?"

"I don't know…" Even though Luan undoubtedly felt better following her talk with her sister, the sight of Benny's name on her screen conjured up residual feelings of hurt and self-loathing. She could only imagine how much those feelings would be amplified sitting beside him in the Detroit Opera House. On the other hand, she was bound to have to face him sooner or later, and it might have been best to get it over with. "It still hurts to think about. I don't think I'd be able to enjoy myself even if I _did_ go."

"That'd be a shame; for you to have gone through the trouble of buying those tickets, just to end up staying home. I think you and Benny could still have a lot of fun together, if you'd be willing to give it a chance."

"I think I still just need a little time is all."

Lori made a motion like she was about to argue her point, but ultimately one look into Luan's face, which still bore so much sadness in its expression, talked her out of it. "Okay," she said gently. "I won't pressure you to do anything you don't want to. If you'd rather stay home, then that's perfectly alright."

Without saying another word, Luan silently returned her attention to Luna's MP3 player, which she had set to the side during her conversation with Lori. One of the headphones was still in her left ear while the other hung uselessly down her chest. Once again, she pressed the opposite earphone into her sister's hand, allowing her to serve as her company for misery. After the older girl inserted the white bud into her ear, both she and her sister layed down side-by-side to silently enjoy the rest of the song.

 _...C'mon and save me  
_ _Why don't you save me  
_ _If you could save me_

 _From the ranks of the freaks  
_ _Who suspect they could never love anyone  
_ _Except the freaks  
_ _Who suspect they could never love anyone  
_ _Except the freaks who could never love anyone…_

* * *

There were few movies that Benny loved more than _Jurassic Park_.

True, his taste in film usually leaned more towards silent-era comedies ( _he would be the first to admit that he had a rather dated sense of humor_ ), but in his opinion nothing in cinematic history could match the sheer spectacle of _Jurassic Park's_ tyrannosaurus-rex chase sequence, nor the awe-inspiring majesty of the scene in which Dr. Alan Grant first gazes upon a brontosaurus herd with John Williams' score swelling in the background, nor the terror that he felt as a small child when he first watched on his CRT television screen a pair of velociraptors brought vividly to life through ( _then_ ) state-of-the-art special effects.

All of the best films were made before the turn of the twenty-first century, as far as Benny was concerned, though his view may have been at least partly shaded by the fact that he could not often afford many trips to the Royal Woods Cinema to see the latest attractions as they came out, and thus relied mostly on videocassettes purchased from local secondhand shops for his entertainment. Sour grapes and all that…

There was one subtle detail within the blockbuster that Benny had always found to be an absolutely ingenious touch, that being the fact that the park's founder John Hammond ( _portrayed by Richard Attenborough, one of Benny's all-time favorite filmmakers and the director of_ Chaplin _;_ _in his opinion an incredibly moving biopic about the legendary comic actor_ ) walked with the aid of a cane that had an amber jewel set upon the hilt, within which a prehistoric mosquito was frozen mid-flap of its wings. What an inglorious fate for a creature that had witnessed firsthand the ancient megafauna which had once roamed the earth; reduced to giving an elderly man a firm handle to clasp onto as he traversed his environment.

As Benny sat with his father in their car in the cold parking garage just outside of the Detroit Opera House, each of them dressed in formal wear ( _formal being a relative term in their case_ ) and quietly chowing down on cheap and flavorless fast-food hamburgers, he could not help but to think of that mosquito and sympathize with its situation. With the honey-colored glow of the orange parking-garage lights beaming in through the car windows, coupled with the stifling and claustrophobic silence, Benny felt similarly entrapped in amber.

Yearning for something to keep his mind occupied, Benny allowed his imagination to wander; to _Jurassic Park_ , to fossilized insects, to Drama Club, and finally to Luan. It seemed that, over the course of the past day-and-a-half, most of his thoughts led back to her, one way or another. He wished that she were there with him to fill the car with her corny jokes and wonderful laughter. Instead, she had texted him the previous night and told him that she had fallen a little under the weather and could not, after all, make it to the play.

' _You should go with your dad instead_ ,' she had suggested in her message, displayed on the screen of Benny's old flip-phone, only after a brief back-and-forth in which she adamantly argued against taking their tickets back for a refund. ' _Have fun!_ '

An unlikely prospect. It was not that Benny did not love his father, of course. There was no denying, however, that the man was not exactly a sparkling conversationalist. Not even with those to whom he shared any common interests. What chance then did Benny have?

Occasionally in between his bites of food he cast subtle glances to his left, searching for an opportunity to speak but instead only seeing a balding middle-aged man with five o'clock shadow and dressed in a wrinkled periwinkle button-up shirt hungrily devouring his dinner.

Benny could feel a certain pressure to fill that unbearable quiet with something, _anything_. "So…" he tentatively began. "Have you ever seen _Fiddler_ before?"

His father swallowed a bite of food, washed it down with a sip of root beer from a styrofoam cup, and thought for a moment. "...I think I saw the movie once a long time ago."

It was not much, but it was just enough for Benny to go off of, and for that he was thankful. "The movie's good, a classic even, but you can't beat seeing it live," he said, hoping that his enthusiasm would be contagious. "Even the best adaptations lose a little magic in the transition from stage to screen. 'Same thing happened when they made a movie based on _The Music Man_." He paused a moment to allow for an articulate response which never came. Rather, his father merely gave a little hum in acknowledgment. Benny was not about to let that stop him. "Do you have a favorite song? Mine's 'If I Were a Rich Man,' though 'Sabbath Prayer' is really beautiful. Listening to it always kinda makes me wish that we were more in touch with our faith, ya know?"

For a moment his father appeared to search his thoughts, and Benny felt a glimmer of hope that the two of them could share a genuine moment of familial bonding. That was snuffed out, however, when his dad opened his mouth once more. "Uh, to tell you the truth, I don't remember the music a whole lot. I don't really go for this froo-froo stuff, usually." He paused and seemed to notice the faintly disappointed expression that fell upon his son's face. "...Still excited to be spending time with you though, Benny-buddy," he hastily amended, playfully punching his son in the bicep. His excitement did not sound sincere.

"Thanks dad. Same here." The atmosphere of the car fell once more into an awkward silence, punctuated occasionally by the sounds of fast-food wrappers crinkling and the last remnants of pop being sucked through plastic straws. Again Benny allowed his mind to wander, and again his thoughts drifted to Luan. He had never shared any awkward silences while in _her_ company. Silences, yes, but they were never uncomfortable, and while part of him doubted that she was genuinely sick, he still hoped that by Monday she would feel better in every way that mattered, and that their friendship could resume as normal. An unlikely prospect, he was well-aware, ever since the fiasco in the storage closet the previous day. Still, a boy could dream, though such a dream was quickly interrupted by a glob of mustard falling from the burger in his hands and onto his red tie. "Dangit," he cursed angrily under his breath, grabbing a fistful of napkins from the paper bag on his lap and frantically swabbing at the blemish.

"You're too fussy," his father said. "It's not that big a deal."

"Yes it is," Benny insisted with a resigned sigh, pausing to examine his handiwork. All that he had managed to do was smear the yellow across the width of the linen. "This is the Detroit Opera House we're about to go into," he stressed, lending extra emphasis to each syllable of the venue. "I can't go in looking like a slob! Besides, half the fun of going to the theatre is getting to dress nice."

Benny had the feeling that he was wasting his breath. His father's tie, embroidered with Peanuts characters, was already blotched with countless condiment stains from years gone by, as was his shirt at several spots. Not that the older man cared or even seemed to notice. "No worries, let me take care of that for ya," he said in a chipper voice. He ran his thumb across the side of his lip where hung a blot of ketchup and transferred it over and atop the mustard stain, covering it with a streak of crimson that was a shade darker than the rest of the tie. An inelegant solution, if it could be called a solution at all.

Still, Benny supposed that it was the best that he could hope for. "Er, thanks…"

"That's what dads are for," his father said proudly, then returned his attention towards eating. Benny's appetite, in contrast, had evaporated. He threw the rest of his sandwich along with its crumpled wrapper into the paper fast-food bag set by his feet and glanced at the dashboard clock, counting down the seconds until he would be sitting in a dark auditorium to be transported as if by magic to the little town of Anatevka, circa 1905.

Ever since he was a little kid, theatre had served as his escape; from loneliness, from friendlessness, and even from bullying on occasion. Tonight, it would once again act as a welcome distraction from the issues that plagued him, even though he doubted that he would enjoy the show as much as if Luan were there beside him.

Several more minutes of agonizing quiet passed before his father spoke up again. "So, why'd you say your girlfriend couldn't make it?" he asked with a playful nudge of the elbow into his son's ribs.

Benny instantly felt his face heat up. He always hated the way that blushing made him feel; so sweltered, so embarrassed, so self-conscious. Even when he rolled down the passenger window a crack to allow for a cool breeze to waft over his face, his discomfort could not be blown away. "She said she was sick." Seeing as he had already explained the situation to his dad earlier that day, he had a suspicion that he was simply being teased. "And she's not my girlfriend…"

It was a phrase that Benny had stated countless times to his father before, and he was becoming so sick of repeating those same six words over and over again. His father, meanwhile, never seemed to grow tired of replying in the same manner each and every time. "Right, sure she's not," he said sarcastically, then chuckled to himself.

Some small part of Benny wanted to leave the exchange at that and keep silent, yet another, more persuasive part, one that was desperately yearning for some advice, ultimately eked out. "She, um, did tell me that she liked me yesterday, though," Benny said quietly, half-hoping that his father would not hear him. "You know...in _that_ way." Glancing carefully to his left, he saw that his hope was unfounded. His father could not have been grinning any wider. "I turned her down," Benny was quick to add. "It's like I always tell you; I just see her as a friend." When he checked again, he saw that his father's smile had fallen, replaced with a look of mild bafflement. _Maybe this was a bad idea_ , Benny thought. _Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut_. Awkward silence would have been far preferable to seeing that expression. "Are you...are you disappointed in me?"

"You're my son; I could never be disappointed in you," the older man said, and for that Benny was at least somewhat thankful. "I guess I'm just a little surprised is all. I always thought you two made for such a sweet couple."

There it was again; that shameful reddening of Benny's face. He could not fathom how anyone could ever think of blushing as 'cute' or 'funny.' "I guess I'm just not really interested in romance just yet…" Actually, that was not entirely true. Benny adored romance when it was confined to the stage and screen ( _he would be the first to admit that he was a bit of a sap_ ). Whenever he watched the cinematic adaptation of _Fiddler on the Roof_ , for example, he always let out a little internal cheer at the scene in which Tevye allows his daughter Tzeitel to marry Motel the tailor for love rather than Lazar Wolf the butcher for wealth. He was always completely charmed by the scene in which Hodel and Perchik first dance together by a riverbank. Chava and Fyedka-

Well, Benny had actually always found Chava and Fyedka's relationship to be pretty underdeveloped as compared to the other storylines in the film, but the point still stood. He loved romance when it serviced the plots in his favorite movies and plays. He sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with him, then, that he should not have any interest in it for himself. "Do you think I did the right thing?" he asked. "You know, by turning her down?"

A pregnant pause followed, after which the older man spoke hesitantly. "Why? Are you having second thoughts?" Maybe it was just Benny's imagination, but he believed that he could hear a tiny shred of hopefulness hiding behind that question.

"I'm just worried I pushed her away," Benny admitted sullenly. "What if she doesn't want to be my friend anymore? She seemed really upset…"

What Benny wanted more than anything else was to hear some reassurance that his and Luan's friendship was strong enough to survive anything. That, even though he may have hurt her feelings there in the storage closet, it would have been far more hurtful in the long run to have not been honest about his emotions. That it was completely normal for an adolescent boy, aged fourteen, to not be ready for a relationship. Instead, after a brief stretch of thoughtful silence, his father turned and delivered unto him a complete non-sequitur. "…Do you remember the first play you ever acted in?" Benny, stunned into silence by the suddenness of the question, did not answer right away. "Man, what was it again…"

Benny could not help but feel a little hurt that his dad needed a reminder. It had been such a meaningful day in his young life. " _Alice in Wonderland_ ; seventh grade," he finally said. "I was the Frog Footman."

"Right, that's the one! You were the best part of the whole show!"

Benny, who had always been his own harshest critic, could see empty flattery from a mile away. "I only had a couple lines…"

"Even so, I remember being so proud of you when you walked out on that stage. You were so nervous beforehand, remember?"

How could Benny ever have forgotten the hours spent afterschool rehearsing his meagre few lines? The nights spent rereading his script over and over again and again before bed? The moments spent in the school bathroom on opening night hyperventilating and choking back nervous sobs before the curtain was set to rise? All in the service of a performance that, looking back, Benny could now see as amateurish and stiff, but mostly passable. The audience applauded him and his young co-stars when they all went out to take their final bow, and he liked to think that he had emerged from the experience having developed a more confident stage-presence. What that had to do with Luan, however, he was unsure. "Um, yes…"

At last his father seemed ready to make his point. "You've always been a pretty shy kid, Benny, but what I admire most about you is that you never let your shyness stop you from taking chances and trying new things." At that, he reached over to rest his massive and well-callused hand on his son's shoulder, an action that he likely meant to be reassuring but instead only made Benny feel as though a terrible pressure were pressing down upon him. "Even though you were scared to put yourself out there on the stage like that, it all worked out in the end, right? I mean, you love acting in plays, don't ya?"

"Y-yeah, um, I do…" Benny stammered. He hated the direction in which he was being led, but felt utterly powerless to do anything about it.

Oblivious, or perhaps just indifferent, to his son's discomfort, the older man smiled as if he were a player at a card game about to reveal his winning hand. "And you like Luan, right?

"Well, yes, but-"

"-But not in that way, yeah, I heard you," his father casually brushed aside. Though his tone was still mostly lighthearted, Benny could detect a certain sense of impatience creeping into his voice. "You know what I think? I think you're just a little nervous about taking your relationship with Luan to the next level, just like you were nervous before playing the Fish Footman. All I'm saying is; what's the harm in at least giving dating her a try? I think it'd be a really good experience for you. That's what being young is all about; taking in new experiences. Besides, which would you rather have; Luan as your girlfriend, or not at all?"

"Do you really think that's what it would come down to?" Benny asked. The cold sweat and racing heartbeat that he had felt on the night of his acting debut was nothing compared to what he was feeling now, hard though he tried to keep his composure. His father gave a slight shrug as his answer and said no more, and suddenly Benny felt a powerful need to exit the car and suck powerful breaths of fresh air into his lungs. Fortunately for him, one more glance to the dashboard clock told him that the time was now 7:00 PM, a mere half-hour before the show was scheduled to begin. "...We should go into the theatre now," he said meekly, thankful that his father then took his hand from off his shoulder. That awful pressure, nevertheless, remained. "The play's gonna start soon, and I want to be able to look at my program while the lights are still on."

"Sure thing, Benny-buddy!" his father said happily, and it was as though the previous few minutes had never even happened. After taking one final sip from his styrofoam cup, he threw the empty vessel along with his hamburger wrapper into the paper bag on his lap, then tossed the trash uncaringly into the already-cluttered back seat. Assuming that his father was now ready to leave, Benny unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the car-door, dreading the fact that, rather than being able to enjoy the play, he would be forced to mull his father's heart-to-heart over in his head even as the actors sang and danced around the stage. Before his feet could touch the pavement, however, he heard his father say two simple words. "Sunrise, Sunset."

"What?"

"Sunrise, Sunset," his father repeated. "That's my favorite song from _Fiddler on the Roof_ , I just remembered. 'Know why?" Benny, taken utterly aback, shook his head. "Because it reminds me of how you're growing up, and of what a good young man I have for a son."

With that, Benny and his father left the car and walked through the parking garage, on their way to see a play about the stifling nature of tradition.


	5. Chapter 5

By Monday, Benny came to feel envious of machines, and wished that he too could simply be switched off to have whatever was broken or missing inside of him repaired or replaced.

After all, Romeo and Juliet were only in their early teens when they fell into a passionate yet ultimately tragic romance, and in _Fiddler on the Roof_ , Chava was a mere fifteen when she fell in love with Fyedka and got married. Surely then, it stood to reason that there must have been _something_ the matter with Benny if, at the age of fourteen, he had yet to experience even so much as a stir of longing for romantic companionship at any stage of his young life. What did it say about his capacity for love, he had spent the previous two sleepless nights wondering as he lay awake in bed, that he had no desire to date even Luan, who was surely the most important girl in his life? Before his talk with his father, he had assumed that he could not possibly have cared any more for her than he already did, but now he was forced to reconsider; was he simply a freak who could never _truly_ love anyone, to paraphrase the old Aimee Mann song from one of his favorite movies?

Afterschool, during Drama Club's rehearsal for their upcoming Fall play, Benny sat in a seat at the far back of the auditorium while up on the stage two of his fellow actors went through the motions of a choreographed sword fight, overseen by Mrs Bernardo. Thrusting and parrying with plastic scimitars, the likes of which small children liked to brandish while playing Pirates, even from the cheap seats Benny was not impressed with the production value, but then again Fall plays always were lower budgeted affairs when compared to those that the Theatre Department put on in the Spring.

Autumn was a season for minimalist sets and simple props and for stories that were more concerned with delivering clever dialogue than jaw-dropping set-pieces. It was a season for chamber plays like _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ and _Waiting for Godot_.

Spring, in contrast, was a season for showstopping numbers and elaborate costumes ( _or about as elaborate as an underfunded High School Theatre Department could manage, anyway_ ) and gorgeously painted backdrops and gigantic papier-mâché dragons. It was a season for crowdpleasing musicals like _The Music Man_ and _Fiddler on the Roof_.

As much as Benny adored theatre in all of its forms, he had to admit that, as an actor, he preferred the quieter, more character-driven plays that alit the stage during the Fall to the flash and pomp of the Spring musicals, which he preferred to enjoy as a spectator. An unpopular opinion, he was sure. He supposed that he was of the same mind when it came to relationships.

Several rows ahead of him, other members of the Drama Club sat in their seats, taking Mrs Bernardo's little swordplay breakdown as an excuse to chat amongst themselves or look at their phones or, in a few rare cases, actually glance over their scripts. Benny had a few lines of his own that he was rehearsing, though his were written in his mind rather than in ink on paper. As one of the play's principal leads, he undeniably felt a certain sense of obligation to take out his script from his backpack and join the others in nursing his part, but ultimately he decided against it. Instead, he silently mouthed a string of words which he had spent the better part of the previous day trying to perfect. Though he had long ago conquered the stage fright that always used to rear its head before every one of his performances, he could not help the horrible sensation of dread which churned within the cauldron of his stomach. He knew that, should the words fail him at the crucial moment, rather than a few scattered boos from an audience or a mediocre review in the school paper, he was at risk of enduring something far more horrible; losing Luan from his life completely.

Benny had firmly made up his mind regarding his father's question. He would much rather have Luan as his girlfriend, no matter how uncomfortable such a prospect made him feel, than not at all. As was often the case with him, his reasoning was rooted in theatre; if Tevye and Golde could learn to love each other after twenty-five years in an arranged marriage, then what was to stop the scenario from being the same between him and Luan? He only hoped that she would still be willing to at least speak with him, a prospect that was looking increasingly unlikely the longer the day went on. He had not so much as heard from her since Saturday night, and he already was missing her presence. As much as he hated himself for it, he found himself hoping that she was simply sick and resting in bed at her house rather than at school and making a conscious effort to avoid him.

Usually, they would meet at his locker in the morning to start the schoolday off with a breezy conversation peppered with a few puns and jokes as they walked to their separate classes; today Benny gathered his books alone.

Usually they would sit together at lunch to discuss their schoolwork or their plans for the weekend or their home lives, with Benny especially loving all of the stories that Luan would tell of her chaotic life with ten siblings; today Benny ate on his own.

Usually they would spend whatever time in Drama Club that was not used towards rehearsing their parts by holding little competitions to see who could make the other one laugh the hardest ( _Luan almost always won_ ); today Benny sat by himself, whispering his handcrafted lines under his breath. Though he was not much of a playwright ( _other than a few terrible one-acts that he had written in his spare time_ ), he still hoped that the words that he had come up with would suffice for his purposes.

So absorbed was he in his thoughts that at first he did not notice the slight tickling that came to the very tips of his curly hair on the top of his crown, as if a cranefly had wandered into the auditorium and was now flying around his head. Eventually though, the sensation became an unwelcome distraction, and so he absentmindedly took to waving his hand about the air to swat the troublesome insect away.

It was not until he saw a white envelope floating in front of his face that he realized what was _really_ going on.

While at first he was confused, a small smile quickly came to his mouth once he remembered where and when last he saw a parcel of such a type, and he plucked it from the air as if it were a ripened apple from a tree, tearing it from the hook and fishing line to which it had been attached.

As if to confirm his suspicions, a familiar voice sounded behind him, a voice that Benny had been longing to hear all day. "Hey there, Benny-boy," the voice said, tinged slightly with a rare and sad kind of humor. Turning around nearly fast enough to give himself whiplash, he saw Luan sitting with her legs crossed casually in the row behind him, holding a fishing pole in her hands and bearing a tired grin upon her lips. How long she had been sitting there Benny neither knew nor cared, as while her smile was a bit more strained than usual, there was no denying that there sat the same girl who had so often brightened his days in the past.

"Luan!" he exclaimed, wishing that the aisle of red-velvet seats were not in his way so that he could hasten towards her to give her a hug. "I was so worried about you! Are you feeling okay? 'Still sick?"

"Eh," Luan mumbled with a shrug. "A little. 'Been feeling better though." While still unsure as to whether or not she was ever truly ill in the first place on Saturday night, her answer did at least put Benny's mind at ease, if only slightly. It's purpose fulfilled, Luan set the fishing pole against her armrest, got up from her chair, and climbed over the back of the seat by Benny's lefthand side to sit next to him. "But enough about that," she said. "Tell me about the play. Did you and your dad have a good time?"

While there were other matters that Benny would rather have spoken about, he counted himself lucky that she was willing to ask such a question in the first place. "It was okay," he said. "I mean, the Opera House is just as beautiful as it is in all the pictures I've seen, and the play itself was amazing. The guy playing Tevye was fantastic. It would have been a lot more fun with you there, though. _You_ wouldn't have fallen asleep in the middle of the first act, like my dad did. An usher almost threw us out 'cause he was snoring so loud."

Her resulting laughter was so loud that it disrupted the swordfight on the stage, and the two duelists and Mrs Bernardo briefly paused their work to shoot the pair a strange glare before carrying on. It was so good to hear her laugh again, Benny thought, even if he could imagine that there was plenty of pain hidden behind that laugh. "Oh man," she said as she brushed a mirthful tear from her eye. "That's priceless! You must have been so embarrassed."

"Yeah, but not as much as when he woke up during 'Sunrise, Sunset' and started bawling his eyes out." In the moment, he remembered feeling so humiliated and upset as he sunk in his seat and buried his red face into the lining of his jacket, but now he could not help but chuckle along with Luan. She always helped him to see the humor in any situation. "You should have seen him; leaning over to tell me how proud he was of me." At that, he adopted a gruff tone of voice in an exaggerated impression of his sobbing father. " _Benny-buddy, when did you get to be so tall! You're becoming such a man…_ "

"I gotta admit," Luan said with a smirk, "I kinda wish I had been there to see that." They continued to giggle together, but eventually their laughter died down, leaving a certain melancholy quiet in its wake, filled only by the faint noise of plastic blades clanging together at the front of the auditorium. "I'm sorry I couldn't make it, by the way," she continued, casting her head downwards and rubbing at the nape of her neck. "I, um, really wasn't feeling up to it."

"It's alright. I understand…" Something unspoken passed between the pair of them in that moment, and Benny knew for certain that she had not missed out on a night at the opera due to any physical sickness. Their preceding conversation was thus suddenly cast into a whole new spotlight. As much as Benny would liked to have continued on pretending as though Friday had never happened, he was forced to consider; had she only been acting these past few minutes? Was this all some elaborate performance? She had always been a much better actor than he was, in his opinion ( _comedians always made for the best dramatic actors_ ), so it was difficult for him to know for certain. If such was the case, then eventually their friendship was bound to fall apart irreparably, happy though she seemed in the moment. Better then, he firmly decided, to continue on with his initial plan. Still feeling the weight of his father's heavy hand on his shoulder, Benny figured that it was time to put the words which he had been practicing so diligently to the test. "So, I've been thinking a lot lately," he began slowly. "You know, about us…"

The smile which had haunted Luan's face dropped immediately, and suddenly she became as still as a tree painted onto a canvassed backdrop, its leaves unable to rustle with the wind. "Oh, yeah?" was all that she could say in reply.

Benny nodded and continued on, struggling to call to mind everything that he had wanted to tell her. Shakespearian monologues were not quite so difficult to memorize. "Yeah," he repeated quietly. "Look, I know that you probably have some, um… _mixed emotions_ about being around me right now. But what I said to you back in the storage closet, you know, about how I'd go so far as to say that I love you? I stand by that. You mean so much to me, Luan, and even if it's not quite _that_ kind of love that I feel, well…" He paused a moment to take a deep breath which did nothing at all to calm his nerves. Hoping to gauge her reaction thus far, Benny glanced at her face, finding it to be completely unreadable. Nevertheless, he felt that he needed to press onward. "…I know how much it probably hurts to think of being friends with a guy who turned you down like I did, but I don't want to lose you completely. So maybe if I were to try dating you for a while, then those feelings might come later, like how Tevye sang, ' _But my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other_.' I'd be willing to give it a shot if you are." He reached out to touch her hand with his, hesitantly and in a greatly telegraphed action so as to give her ample time to withdraw in case she was not comfortable with him making contact. Their fingers brushed, and while her touch felt cold, he took it as a good sign that she had allowed him to hold her hand at all. "Besides," he continued, trying to put on a smile, "We're already pretty close. How much more different could dating be from the stuff that we usually do? Um, other than, you know…kissing, I guess…"

It was not quite Tennessee Williams in terms of quality, and try hard though he might, he could not bring himself to imagine an orchestra swelling with triumphant music as soon as he finished his monologue, but Benny felt that he had done a pretty decent job of getting his point across, though he mentally kicked himself for flubbing a few of his intended lines here and there. To his surprise, however, Luan's reaction was not an enthusiastic 'yes,' nor did she throw her arms around his neck to embrace him. Rather, she merely sighed tiredly and gently pulled away her hand from his clasp. Somehow, the action did not read as a rejection to the young boy, but as a relief, as if a weight were being lifted off of his shoulders. "Benny…" she said in a voice that was oh so soft and sympathetic and emotionally drained all at once. "I admit, some small part of me really, _really_ wants to say yes and see where this might lead…"

Her hesitation was not lost on the boy. "But?"

"…But I don't want you to do anything you're not comfortable with. Otherwise, _neither_ of us would be happy in a relationship. So I guess what I'm asking is; is this all something that you actually _want_ to try, or is this just something that you feel like you _have_ to try?"

Suddenly all of Benny's carefully chosen words vanished as though into a mist, and as he tried to rewrite the script in his head on the fly, he could do nothing but stare at Luan's face as she awaited an answer. "Luan, I…" He quickly realized that he had no idea at all how to finish his sentence, and so his voice trailed off. He supposed that if he had truly wanted to follow through with his plan, he would have been able to come up with something on the spot.

His lack of an answer was clearly answer enough for Luan. "Alright," she said quietly with a sense of finality. "That settles it then."

Just as he had done in the Opera House once his father started bawling, Benny sunk miserably into his seat, feeling rather on the verge of tears himself. "I think there might be something seriously the matter with me…"

"Why would you think that?" She dared not to speak above a whisper.

"Because you're such an amazing person, Luan. You're funny, and smart, and so, _so_ kind. I just feel like somebody would have to be insane not to want to date you."

When her hand reached out and clasped over his, her touch did not feel so cold as it had during Benny's little soliloquy. "There's nothing wrong with you, Benny, or with me," she assured him, speaking soothingly. "We just want different things is all. It's not worth ruining our friendship over."

Benny looked up at the girl with a hopeful expression blooming over his face. "You mean…" he began, scarcely wishing to tempt fate by sounding so optimistic. "You're still willing to be my friend?"

Luan nodded, allowing herself to smile once again that silver-and-enamel grin which Benny adored so much. "Of course I am," she said, as if there was nothing in the world so obvious. "Besides," she added with a chuckle, "I decided I'm probably way out of your league anyway."

A small laugh escaped from Benny's mouth, though his sense of joy was quickly cut short. "But," he hesitantly began, "Won't that, you know…hurt?"

"I mean, yeah," she reluctantly admitted, "It's probably going to hurt for a while, thinking of what could have been, but hey, you know what they say." At that, she shrugged, so carefree and nonchalant as if to say with the gesture, _C'est la vie_. "Time heals all wounds."

Benny could not help but curl the very edge of his mouth into a nigh-imperceptible smirk. "That's such a cliché," he teased, though he had to admit; he was slowly beginning to feel better, now that he knew he was no longer at risk of Luan exiting from his life entirely.

The young comedienne took the jest in stride, as she always did. "Well, as my mom once told me, 'sometimes things are cliché for a reason." Strengthening her clasp on her friend's hand, Luan raised him up in his seat so that his back stood straight and looked into his eyes. "There's more to life than romance, you know," she said, sounding so self-assured. "Whether it's something that comes to you when you're young, or old, or even if it's something you never really have an interest in, it's not worth defining your whole self-worth by, and it's definitely not something you have to spend all your time worrying about when you're fourteen, no matter what the plays and movies say. Trust me, I'd know. You know what you _should_ be worrying about instead?"

All of a sudden, Benny was overcome with the sense that he had forgotten something. "What?" he asked, to which she raised an eyebrow mischievously and pointed to the envelope that now lay discarded on his lap. "Oh, right!" Smiling sheepishly, he grabbed the white parcel and tore it open, finding inside two rectangular cards of paper colored over in red and gold ink. Clearly, they were meant to mimic the tickets from the Detroit Opera House. "Luan, I don't think I understand…"

"Well, I figured that since I missed out on seeing _Fiddler_ with you at the Opera House, you could come over and we could watch the movie version together after rehearsal's over. After all, we're still gonna audition to be Tevye and Golde together in the Spring, right? You know, if you want…"

Once again, Benny looked down at the two homemade tickets, and although they were undoubtedly crudely made, he found them to be no less beautiful than the genuine articles in their own way. "I take back what I said on Friday," he said, folding the two tickets and placing them carefully into his pocket. " _This_ is the best present I've ever been given."

She smiled so sweetly, as though smitten with the boy's kind words. "I know it's not really as glamorous as a night at the opera," she began to say, sounding a bit apologetic, "But-"

"-But nothing!" Benny interrupted, grinning as widely as he had ever smiled before. "The movie's an absolute classic!" He left it unspoken that, as long as they could share in the experience together, he could not have cared less whether they were sitting side by side in a packed auditorium or on a sofa in her living room. "You know, I used to think that no film adaptation could beat seeing a play live, but the more I think about it, the less certain I am. For one thing, in movies, what you lose in immediacy can be more than made up for in cinematography."

Unlike Benny's father, Luan knew exactly how to converse about the finer points of theatre. "Right, exactly!" she nearly shouted before remembering to keep her voice down. "Plus, I'd take a real set to a painted backdrop any day of the week."

"Oh, me too," Benny said excitedly. "The only thing I'll say in the play's favor is that the singing isn't _quite_ as good in the film. Zero Mostel in the original Broadway cast was a much better Tevye than Topol, in more ways than one."

Luan gasped as if what Benny had just said was sacrilege. "No way," she argued. "Zero's way too over the top!"

"That's just the way that theatre acting is!" He could not help but chuckle at how playfully heated their exchange had become. "You've gotta play to the people in the back row, and Zero does so perfectly."

"Well," she said with a grin and a roll of her eyes, "How 'bout for now we just agree that both are great in their own way?"

He nodded in agreement, and they continued to talk for hours there in their seats, even after rehearsal was finished and the stagelights were all shut off and the curtain drawn to a close. It was as if after not seeing each other all weekend they suddenly had years of catching up to do.

When the time finally came to leave, they grabbed their backpacks and caught a ride from Lori to Luan's house, where they sat together on her living room sofa to stay up late watching _Fiddler on the Roof_ on DVD. Benny had his own copy of the film on videotape back at his apartment, and being that it was a three-hour-long movie, it was split across two cassettes.

He much preferred watching it completely uninterrupted with his best friend Luan by his side.

* * *

 ** _AN:_** _Thank you for reading._


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